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Introduction to Sudan
created on:
2001-07-28
Sudan is Africa's largest country, embracing 2,505,810 square kilometers of northeast and central Africa. It consists of a huge plain bordered on three sides by mountains: to the east the Red Sea Hills, to the west Jabal Marrah, and on the southern frontier the Didinga Hills and the Dongotona and Imatong mountains. Jutting up abruptly in the south-central region of this vast plain are the isolated Nuba Mountains and Ingessana Hills, and far to the southeast, the lone Boma Plateau near the Ethiopian border. Spanning eighteen degrees of latitude, the plain of the Sudan includes from north to south significant regions with distinctive characters--northern Sudan, western Sudan, the central clay plains, eastern Sudan, the southern clay plains, and the Jabal Hadid, or Ironstone Plateau, and southern hill masses.
Although Sudan lies within the tropics, the climate ranges from arid in the north to tropical wet-and-dry in the far southwest. Temperatures do not vary greatly with the season at any location; the most significant climatic variables are rainfall and the length of the dry season. Variations in the length of the dry season depend on which of two air flows predominates, dry northeasterly winds from the Arabian Peninsula or moist southwesterly winds from the Congo River basin.
Temperatures are highest at the end of the dry season when cloudless skies and dry air allow them to soar. The far south, however, with only a short dry season, has uniformly high temperatures throughout the year. In Khartoum, the warmest months are May and June, when average highs are 41° C and temperatures can reach 48° C. Northern Sudan, with its short rainy season, has hot daytime temperatures year round, except for winter months in the northwest where there is precipitation from the Mediterranean in January and February. Conditions in highland areas are generally cooler, and the hot daytime temperatures during the dry season throughout central and northern Sudan fall rapidly after sunset. Lows in Khartoum average 15° C in January and have dropped as low as 6° C after the passing of a cool front in winter.
The haboob, a violent dust storm, can occur in central Sudan when the moist southwesterly flow first arrives (May through July). The moist, unstable air forms thunderstorms in the heat of the afternoon. The initial downflow of air from an approaching storm produces a huge yellow wall of sand and clay that can temporarily reduce visibility to zero.
Although Sudan has a lot to offer with its very friendly people (among a lot of travelers the Sudanese are the most friendly people of Africa) and the fact that there are more ruins and relics in Sudan than anywhere else in Africa, a long-running civil war makes travel in some parts of Sudan very risky or impossible. Visiting Khartoum is relatively unproblematic, but the south is in the hands of Christian and animist rebels, and should be considered off-limits. Also the Darfur region in Western Sudan should be avoided, so first make sure you get the latest information before traveling to Sudan.
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