Our Keith:
> The 44" is for a typical year. It is not the average, but the mode.
...
> I tend to think of the rainfall that there is as pretty torrential,
causing flash floods and then quickly running off. The valley is
described as pretty a pretty tangled morass of vegetation with long
grass.
Me:
In the Tropics...
Two shortish rainy seasons with pronounced intervening dry seasons:
60-125cm pa
One fairly long rainy season, one long dry season: 75-125cm pa
[where 44" = ca. 110cm]
I lived in two parts of the semi-arid region of NE Brazil.
In one, I measured ca. 80cm rainfall in a year, but this was generally lightish rain spread over two rainy seasons, so quite good for crops if they grew fast (beans, maize) or if they could survive the dry seasons (cassava). Patches of proper forest all over.
In the other, I didn't measure rainfall but it was most definitely as Keith describes - rare but when it did rain, it was more than torrential and almost useless for plants, often hardly penetrating the soil. Vegetation scrubby, think African savannah but without the elephants to knock bushes over. Presumably in Prax, the lack of elephants allows Keith's "tangled morass" to grow.
If you wish, google caatinga (two a's) to see what I mean (as well as the modern cowboys and early 20th C bandits of the region)
Cheers,
Sam.
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