Flooding is cyclical in the country, but the rainy season this year has been devastating.

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The increasing unpredictability of the monsoon and erratic rainfall patterns have made the region even more flood-prone with millions of people affected each year, mainly during rainy season.

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But others, including Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the finance minister, are insisting that at least part of the bounty must be used to reduce the public debt, whose interest payments now gobble up nearly a fifth of total tax revenue, and to trim the public deficit (to a planned 2.3% next year) against some future rainy day.

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Heavy rain is typical this time of year in Costa Rica, where the rainy season runs roughly from May-November.

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It even failed to see to it that the drains in Jakarta were cleaned before the rainy season, causing unusually severe flooding earlier this year.

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In the rainy season, which can last for over half the year, getting from one side of town to the other, let alone elsewhere in the state, can become impossible.

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We've had Rose a year now, and there has never been a cold and rainy night when I've resented having to take her outside.

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The diving is phenomenal year-round, but the crossing to the reef can be rough in the peak rainy season (July to September) and from December to February when the northeast monsoon winds are at their strongest.

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In 2008, Carlos Alberto Lopes, then a 23-year-old waiter, was riding in a one-star car traveling about 50 mph on a rainy highway in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais when the road curved smoothly left.

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