er, I live "nowhere NEAR the Amazon rainforest!", you sir are merely on the other side of a mountain range (i imagine) from it.
Actually, i live in the middle of of the Brazilian Plateau (Planalto Central), which is basically a high plains (about 1000m over the ocean).
I don't know too much about why it rains so much around here, but i do know it has something to do with the fact that nearly every river in Brazil passes through some of the land here, or near here. (And we have a fuckton of rivers)
Half the year, it doesn't rain a drop. And i mean it. It doesn't rain at all, not a single drop. Then it starts to get moists... We start to see clouds again. Some small rains, nothing special... Then they get bigger. And when you think the rain couldn't become worse, IT DOES. An entire week goes by where there's only a couple hours between insane downpours. You're lucky if you can get a single day where it doesn't rain at all.
Despite everything functioning like clockwork every single fucking year... The government doesn't do anything to help the floods, especially in the poorest parts of the city.
There's a video floating around of a guy literally JETSKIING in a flooded street about 25km~ of where i live. ( Link:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=827314027333457 )
I deal with power outages every single year. It's normal, this part of the year.
It has *NEVER* been this bad, though. I remember some times where it was most of a day, but never over 24 hours.
Flooding is getting worse and worse every year. Thankfully, we don't have slopes, because if we did, we would have to deal with landslides, like they do in the South/Southeast.
If we did have worse natural disasters than a big rain, we would have possibly already been wiped out, if we had to depend on the government doing anything.