By Hassan I. Conteh

Our very wet weather in Sierra Leone is changing each year since effectively 2021.

As an environmentalist, I have closely noticed how these changes in weather occur on a month by month basis over the past few years.

Like I observe the strange windy weather these days, most people too, whom I have talked to and have listened to, have admitted the same – the same story that the atmosphere is very warm now.

At the same time it used to be very cold in June of 2022 as the snow drop in mountains parts on our Western peninsulas. Sometimes it is dew you see up-mountains.

Most people don’t just care that global warming, meaning with the planet especially the sun, is affecting us all as the sun is getting hotter and hotter.

And this change in pattern happens everywhere and almost affects everyone in the world especially in UK and Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, etc.

Scientists call these changes in weather conditions as “climate change.”

Yes, it is climate change.

But is it that scientists are the ones only affected by these changes.

Are they the ones that cause the changes? No, they are not.

Scientists care about us a lot – about our safety on the earth. But the locals or most people around the world don’t care to study about their weather patterns in their respective countries.

Look up the clouds. Make it a habit. There are very thick, white and black clouds, moving at speed now but sometimes so still.

Do you see the same happening over the years – in the past 30 years.

I mean this never used to happen – to see some white or black curling downwards clouds or protruding upwards hovering the atmosphere is usually only happening now.

By 1990s and 1880s it was never the case. Bad weather events occur now than before in Europe, Asia, Americas and Africa. The earth is hot these days. There are more fires, more earthquakes, volcanoes, floods.

For us here in Sierra Leone, Western Area Urban, every day you wake up, you will see some very fearsome clouds in the skies.

Here is what we see last month in Waterloo.

The very thick clouds on a Tuesday morning 13th May, 2025 could be seen hanging for minutes or hours.

For the first time in the history of Sierra Leone, also, people talk of some amount of ice blocks dropping at IMATT in Freetown.

Can you make it a habit now by studying now how our weather is, how our clouds look like in a day, how the sun rises and goes down?