January 2, 2021

No.153

December 2021
(Back Issues Here)

The December 2021 weather continued to introduce the dry season  There was a reduced amount of rain and more wind.  We had 0.42 inches of rain at the Palmira Arriba Station.  The reports from around the District of Boquete for December indicate a generally low rainfall throughout the district. We are clearly moving into the Dry Season.

Rainfall for December 2021
Area	Contributors	December 2021	Total 2021
El Salto Arriba	Beth Corwin	0.68	n/a
El Santuario	Robert Boyd	4.46	108.84
El Santuario	Rodrigo Marciacq	3.98	99.49
Barriade Las Flores	Bill Brick	2.57	95.12
Jaramillo Arriba	Steve Sarner	3.94	179.91
Jaramillo Arriba	Mark Heyer	4.11	141.27
Jaramillo Central	Dave Nichols	2.50	159.63
Jaramillo Abajo	Don Berkowitz	1.21	136.79
Jaramillo Abajo	Bobi McGann	1.14	172.45
Palo Alto	Nancy Pettersen	10.86	145.12
Valle Escondido	Doug Remsen	1.33	92.68
Brisas  Boquetenas	Austin Perry	0.50	n/a
Brisas Boquetenas	Richard Sturtz	0.26	n/a
Los Molinos	Sela Burkholder	0.98	175.33
El Encanto (Volcancito)	Brian Baldwin	1.19	n/a
Cerro Verde (Volcancito)	Charlotte Lintz	1.15	n/a
Santa Lucia	Paula Litt	1.16	138.00
Caldera	Chris Mccall	0.26	158.01
Lucero	Michael Mullin	0.00	237.86
Boquete Country Club	Paul Arrandale	0.77	149.15
Palmira Abajo	Betty Gray	0.20	127.05
Palmira Arriba	Lloyd Cripe	0.42	110.88
El Banco	Laura Daniels	2.05	n/a

The lowest rainfall recorded for December 2021 was by Michael Mullin at Lucero with 0.00 inches.  Betty Gray at Palmira Abajo recored 0.20 inches.  Chris McCall reported 0.26 inches at Caldera as well as Richard Sturtz at Brisas Boquetenas.

The highest rainfall was reported by Nancy Pettersen at Palo Alto with 10.86 inches.  This time of the year they get lots of Bajareque blowing into the north end of Boquete. 

You can look over the annual rainfall results and see that Michael Mullin at Lucero gets the prize with 237.86 inches! The lowest rainfall goes to Doug Remsen in Valle Escondido with 92.68 inches. 

The Palmira Arriba Station recorded only 0.42 inches of rain in December. A bit less than a half-a-inch! Our total for the year was 110.88 inches.

This chart shows the statistics for December months from the years 2007 thru 2021 for the Palmira Arriba Station.  The mean rainfall for December months is 2.86 inches with a standard deviation of 2.26 inches and a range from 0.29 inches to 7.10 inches.  The rain for this December 2021 is 1.08 standard deviations below the mean. 

Palmira Arriba Station Rainfall December over 15 Years

You can look for yourself at a graph of the Palmira Arriba rain data for all the months over the course of the 15 years we have collected it.  You can also look at the tables in the Climate Section to see what rains we have had in various months over the course of the last 15 years as well as other weather variables. The lowest rainfall we ever had in December was 0.29 inches in 2018 and highest rainfall we have had in 15+ years is 7.01 inches in 2017. The mean for December has been 2.86.

You can tell from looking at all of this, that December is usually a low rain month as we transition into the Dry Season.

The latest ENSO Cycle Report is saying that "La Niña is present. Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are below average across the central and east-central Pacific Ocean. The tropical Pacific atmosphere is consistent with La Niña. La Niña is favored to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2021- 22 (~95% chance) and transition to ENSO-neutral during the spring 2022 (~60% chance during April-June)."

Here is a link to a source for understanding El Niño.  If you need some help with this, give this a read and you will learn a lot about this important weather phenomenon.

I want to again mention an excellent understandable presentation about El Niño and the ENSO by Mel Strong in his Introduction to Weather and Climate Short Course available at YouTube. I highly recommend this presentation and the entire course. If you listen to just the one lecture on El Niño, you will more clearly understand the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) system and how it generally affects world weather. He is an exceptional teacher and I find all his lectures in the course to be very informative and uniquely understandable.

The IRI (International Research Institute for Climate and Society) (select South America from the Region menu) is predicting that Panama will have a 40%+ probability of above normal levels of precipitation for the months of January-February-March 2022 (very light green areas).

ETESA's hydrology and meteorology section is predicting that Chiriqui will have about average levels of precipitation in most areas during December of 2021 through February of 2022. You can read their report and check out the details for Chiriqui in the "documents" section at this link.

ETESA recently issued a Bulletin regarding Climate Predictions for December 2021, January 2022 thru March of 2022.  I highly recommend that you take a look at this interesting publication.

In case you aren't aware of it, you can also watch a daily video report of Panama weather conditions at the ETESA website or on YouTube.  Here is the link to their YouTube Channel.  If you click the Subscribe button you can get a daily notifications of the report.  You can practice your Spanish skills by watching it!

A hugely significant human scientific achievement occurred the early morning of December 25 when the James Webb Telescope was launched from earth to begin its long journey to orbit.  In case you missed it, you can take a closed look here.

In case you aren't familiar with the James Web Telescope joint science project by NASA, ESA and CSA, please take the time to check it out.  I think it is one of the most amazing scientific engineering achievements during my lifetime. For an interesting overview of this project take a look at this video. 

You can monitor the progress of the James Web Telescope's journey at this link. As I write this report, it is 578827 miles from earth on its journey to the L2 orbit (about 1 million miles from earth) (31,9846 miles yet to go) where it will begin its work.

It is mind-boggling to realize that humans have created and are carrying out this incredible scientiftic expedition! Let's all hope it goes well.

Meanwhile back here on earth:

6:30 in the morning on December 29, 2021 I saw a beautiful sunrise.  I grabbed some photos with the iPhone.  It was a very special moment:

(click on image to enlarge)

 

COVID INFORMATION

MONITORING CORONAVIRUS STATUS LINKS 

At the moment the worldometer reports 295,435,413 cases of COVID worldwide with 5,473,038 deaths and 256,054,610 recovered cases.  The USA has 458,039,667 total cases with 851,431 total deaths and 241,899,851 recovered cases. Imagine 5,473,038 dead human beings in the world (most probably an underestimation) and 851,431 dead human beings in the United States alone from this disease.  That is a lot of dead people and a serious matter.  Despite these hard facts, I still come across people who think this is no big deal and they think that wearing masks and getting vaccinated it is driven by some sort of governmental conspiracy and it is an infringement of their personal freedoms to cooperate, fall-in-line, and get vaccinated. I think such thinking is sheer folly and such a stance is the height of foolish narcissism and rebellion. I truly don't understand this behavior. This is a public health matter and not a political matter.  It is no infringement of personal rights to join together and cooperate for the good of all. That's why we have driver's licenses, wear seatbelts, drive on the required side of the road, and get vaccinated for smallpox (etc.) because our responsible government has had the foresight to enforce such things. Public health requires that we cooperated and do things together for our well-being. This is no time for stubborn rebelliousness. Don't be contrary. Be cooperative.

Enjoy the good weather and hang on tight to those umbrellas the wind this time of year can rob you of them quickly.

Lloyd Cripe

lcripe@boqueteweather.com