Zambia

Zambia, a country located in southern Africa, is almost entirely covered by a plateau, which tempers the climate, making the temperature generally acceptable for most of the year.

In Zambia, the climate is tropical or sub-tropical depending on altitude, with a hot, humid, and rainy season from mid-November to March and a dry season from April to mid-November. In the dry season, there's a cool period from mid-May to mid-August, and a progressively hotter period from September to mid-November, when the heat becomes torrid, that is, intense but with low humidity. In fact, October is typically the hottest month of the year. On the other hand, moisture is high during the rainy season, which begins around the middle of November, and lasts until the end of March.

During the coolest period, from mid-May to mid-August, it can get cold at night, especially in the southern regions, where the temperature can drop to around freezing (0°C). The driest months are June, July, and August, when it practically never rains. During the dry season, weather conditions are generally very good: the sky is clear and the air is clear. In October and November, the first thunderstorms after the dry season can trigger natural fires, when trees are struck by lightning.

In the rainy season, the rains occur mainly in the form of downpours or thunderstorms. In Zambia, floods caused by heavy rains are quite normal. The wettest areas are the northern ones, namely, the North-Western Province, the Copperbelt Province, and the Northern Province, where precipitation exceeds 1,000 millimeters per year, and in some areas, it can reach 1,400 mm. The most arid area is, in the south-west, the southern part of Barotseland, where the Zambezi River separates Zambia from Namibia and Zimbabwe: in this area, annual rainfall is around 600 mm or even a little below. On the border with Zimbabwe, the Zambezi River feeds the magnificent Victoria Falls, which are about 100 meters high, twice as wide and one and a half taller than the Niagara Falls.

The temperature in Zambia varies according to altitude and latitude. The plateau's altitude ranges mostly from 900 to 1,500 meters, but some areas descend to almost 500 meters, in the far south along the Zambezi River (and in Lake Kariba, created by a dam on the river), and also in the east, in the Luangwa National Park, where the Luangwa River flows. On the contrary, in the north, the altitude reaches 1,800 meters near Mbala, while in the north-east, near the border with Malawi, where the cool grassland of the Nyika National Park is found, it even reaches 2,200 meters.