Dry Climate ((exclusive)): Tropical Wet

The ITCZ had arrived.

Elara wiped a streak of sweat from her forehead, leaving a smear of red dust behind. She stood by the empty riverbed, the Wum Creek, which was currently nothing more than a scar of cracked mud winding through the center of town. In the vernacular of the climate textbooks Elara had studied at the university in the capital, this was the "dry season," characterized by the dominance of the subtropical high-pressure system and the retreating monsoon. In the reality of Nsere, it was simply survival.

This is the climate of the Savanna . It is a realm of vast grasslands dotted with hardy acacia trees, where elephants migrate by the thousands and the sky holds its breath for months on end.

But the biodiversity exploded. Insects that had been dormant in the dry soil emerged in clouds. Frogs sang deafening choruses from the new puddles. Birds arrived from the north, following the rain. The savanna, once a desert of silence, became a cacophony of life. tropical wet dry climate

You don't need constant comfort to thrive. You just need to know how to store up resources during the good times, so you can endure the bad times.

Then, one afternoon in late October, the wind changed.

Nsere was not defined by the wet or the dry. It was defined by the waiting in between. The ITCZ had arrived

Tropical wet-dry climates are generally found between in both hemispheres. Major regions include: Tropical savanna climate (Aw) | SKYbrary Aviation Safety

Elara looked at the sky, where the vultures were beginning to circle higher, riding the thermal updrafts that signaled the return of the heat.

The ITCZ moves away. For four to seven months, the sun is relentless, and the rain stops entirely. In the vernacular of the climate textbooks Elara

"That is not suffocation," Kofi said, watching a line of ants frantically moving their larvae to higher ground. "That is the breath of the ocean held in. Waiting."

"The pump is three miles downstream now," Elara said, her voice raspy. She was a hydrologist, sent here to map the groundwater reserves, but theory had little use when the aquifers were receding faster than she could measure them.