The Dry Season

We're heading into the dry season in the Mara, which generally runs from January until early-mid March when the long rains come. Geemi just sent us some pictures of the Mara River, showing how low the river is. You can actually see the river level on the real-time river gauge on the top right of our blog (under Mara River Water Level). Chris built this river gauge using low-cost Arduino sensors, and it uploads real-time data on the river every 15 minutes. When the arrow is in the red zone, the river is lower than the minimum sustainable flow levels that were identified in the Environmental Flow Assessment for the Mara. You can tell from looking at these pictures that the river is well below where it normally is, and the dry season is just getting started. Hopefully we'll get a few big rains to help fill things up before we head into February...

Looking downstream into Tanzania from the Purungat Bridge

Looking upstream from the Purungat Bridge