We are in the middle of the rainy season in Panama. That means it rains EVERY day! The rainy season is a long one - May to November and Panama gets about 1900 mm of rain per year. This compares to 773 mm in Toronto.
The humidity is quite high and the amount of lightning is spectacular. I have never seen so much lightning in my life. After being here a few weeks and seeing lightning storms once, sometimes two times per day, I was sure this was the lightning capital of the world. A little google searching and I saw a lot of claims that Florida was the lightning capital of the world. But digging a little deeper I came across a great site by NASA. And although Florida has the most lightning strikes in the USA, it is actually a small town in the Congo that hold the number one spot. Below picture is courtesy of NASA - the redder the zones, the more lightning per square kilometre per year. The amount and type of data that NASA collects is quite interesting. They have a great website, but it is not so user friendly and they use a lot of very technical terms. Anyhow - this is a good picture and gives you an idea of where the lightning hot spots are.
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