Where I am is very flat, a limestone finger sticking out between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. There are only a very few hills in one part of the peninsula and they are negligible. The rest of the peninsula is between 0 and 40' above sea level. The city I am in, actually my house, is at +20° 57' 49.97", -89° 37' 45.98" so I'm at 20°n. This is the semi arid tropics, we have enormous rainfall but almost all of it is from June to October. It is very dry in the winter and the lows are generally around 20°c and the highs from 30°c to 35° although today it has gotten to 39°c. Because of the dry season, native plants generally are those that need that period of dry in order to bloom. That's a key thing to know about a plant. We are mostly unsuccessful with any plant that needs chilling and many plants that are susceptible to things like powdery mildew and rust will not do well here as they never go dormant and the humidity is high. Roses for instance, it is a pain to grow them and I tend to think of them as annuals.
So, we are not a desert, we have monsoon type rains in the summer. It not as tropical as where Noel is because I don't think they have wet and dry to the same extreme. In the spring, the hottest time of the year here, it can get very very hot and humid with lots of wind. That's when we all start praying for the rains to begin. Once they start, it rains almost every afternoon and that keeps the temperatures lower and things grow as if on steroids.
