  The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is a TeV gamma-ray and
cosmic-ray detector currently under construction at an altitude of 4100 m close
to volcano Sierra Negra in the state of Puebla, Mexico. The HAWC observatory is
an extensive air-shower array comprised of 300 optically-isolated water
Cherenkov detectors (WCDs). Each WCD contains $\sim$200,000 liters of filtered
water and four upward-facing photomultiplier tubes. In Fall 2014, when the HAWC
observatory will reach an area of 22,000 m$^{2}$, the sensitivity will be 15
times higher than its predecessor Milagro. Since September 2012, more than 30
WCDs have been instrumented and taking data. This first commissioning phase has
been crucial for the verification of the data acquisition and event
reconstruction algorithms. Moreover, with the increasing number of instrumented
WCDs, it is important to verify the data taken with different configuration
geometries. In this work we present a comparison between Monte Carlo simulation
and data recorded by the experiment during 24 hours of live time between 14 and
15 April of 2013 when 29 WCDs were active.
