| May 01, 2018 | No.109 |
April 2018
(Back Issues Here)
April 2018 is behind us. Here are the rainfall totals for the month. At the Palmira Station we had 1.1 inches of rain. The reports from around the District of Boquete for April 2018 are in the following table:
Rainfall for April 2018 |
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Area |
Contributors |
April |
Total 2018 |
El Santuario |
Terry Zach |
0.60 |
7.90 |
Jaramillo Arriba |
Steve Sarner |
2.04 |
10.63 |
Jaramillo Abajo |
Don Berkowitz |
4.49 |
5.92 |
Jaramillo Abajo |
Bobi McGann |
4.36 |
7.42 |
El Salto Arriba |
Rodrigo Marciacq |
2.02 |
5.66 |
Brisas Boquetenas |
Austin Perry |
n/a |
n/a |
Los Molinos |
Sela Burkholder |
8.08 |
11.06 |
Santa Lucia |
Paula Litt |
3.45 |
n/a |
Lucero (Cielo Paraiso) |
Michael Mullin |
6.96 |
9.57 |
Palmira Abajo |
Betty Gray |
3.08 |
3.64 |
Palmira Arriba |
Lloyd Cripe |
1.10 |
1.95 |
n/a = not currently available but will be posted when available |
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Note the highest rainfall for the month of April was at Los Molinos with 8.08 inches. Lucero was next with 6.96 inches. The other high areas were in Jaramillo Abajo. We had more rain than in March at the Palmira Station but not a lot. Compared to previous years from 2007 to 2018, we had less than normal rain compared to the April average. The past average here at the Palmira Station has been 6.54 inches ranging from 0.28 to 16.23 inches. You can check out our Palmira Station rain records for yourself for the last 11 years at this link.
I expected more rain in April but it didn't really happen. On a large scale, there were large cold air masses up north causing high pressures over the Caribbean causing NE breezes and winds coming rushing into our tropical lower pressure area. This brought some bajareque over the mountains but not much serious rain. Some storms developed south of us but the NE winds generally kept them from moving over us except in the Los Molinos, Lucero and Jaramillo Abajo corridors. David had some rain storms. I got blasted with rain coming home from David and passing through the Los Molinos area one day.
Normally more rains are expected here in May and it is often one of our rainiest months during the rainy season. It will be interesting to see what happens this year. We have to wait and see. We certainly could use some more moisture for the plants and agricultural crops here in Palmira.
The latest ENSO Cycle Report is now saying that "La Niña conditions are present. Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are near-to-below average across the east-central and eastern Pacific Ocean. La Niña is expected to transition to ENSO-neutral during the April-May, with ENSO-neutral then likely (greater than 50% chance) to continue through the Northern Hemisphere summer 2018. A transition from La Niña to ENSO-neutral is most likely (~55% chance) during the March-May season, with neutral conditions likely to continue into the second half of the year."
If you want to learn more about El Niño, this is a link to a good web site to understand the phenomenon and its effects on our climate and weather.
The IRI (International Research Institute for Climate and Society) (select South America from the Region menu) is reporting the following precipitation predictions for May-June-July of 2018. Note a 40 % probability prediction of below normal precipitation for our area (yellow).
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ETESA's, hydrology and meteorology section is predicting that most parts of Chiriqui will have generally normal levels of precipitation for the month of May 2018. You can read their report and check out the details for April 2018 in the documents section at this link.
I now digress from the weather to a larger topic -- astronomy.
One of the more serious hobbies of my lifetime has been amateur astronomy. When we moved to Boquete in 2005, I planned to continue with this hobby and brought all my astronomy gear. I quickly discovered that Panama, especially Boquete, is not a very fruitful spot on the planet to observe the night skies (unstable air and clouds). I eventually gave up and sold all of the astronomy gear so I could buy more photography gear. I gave up observing "Twinkles for Tweeters." Despite this change, I remain an amateur astronomer at heart with keen interest in skies. We traveled to Oregon to see the total Solar Eclipse last August.
Last month something momentous happened in the science of astronomy that you may not have heard about. I didn't see much, if any, mainstream news coverage. I think they were too busy uncovering, or should I say revealing, "Stormy Things!" So I will explain the momentous insignificant news.
On April 25, 2018 the ESA (European Space Agency) published Gaia's all-sky view of the Milky Way Galaxy. This map of the sky is based on the measurements of 1.7 billion stars over the course of 2+ years. This is an astounding human achievement. I will try and explain why.
With our naked normal eyes (no binoculars or telescopes) we can see about 5000 total stars depending on individual eyesight. We can only see a portion of the night sky at a time (about 1/2) because only part of the earth's sky faces us. That means on a very dark night with no light pollution we might see 2500 stars. These are mainly brighter stars in our Milky Way Galaxy where our solar system resides.
This article published on April 25, 2018 in Scientific American by Lee Billings, The Milky Way Revealed in a Way as Never Before, helps understand the Gaia accomplishment. You may see Gaia's Sky in Color high resolution image at this link (select one of the highest resolution images in the rightside column to download the image and then click on the downloaded image to see all the detail). 1.7 billion stars measured to extreme accuracy is a lot of stars! Keep in mind you are only seeing the stars in our galaxy.
Humans have been seeing these stars for a long time and trying to study and understand them. Maps were made. Eventually with the aid of land based optical equipment (telescopes) humans saw more and more and learned more and more about the stars and the universe. The Maps became better. More recently space based equipment was used to learn more and more. This is the story of astronomy and much of the story of science. If you want to read about this human journey in some detail, I highly recommend an award winning book by Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way. I think it is the best single popular book ever written on the history of science/astronomy. It is very readable and hard to put down. This book sets the stage for understanding and appreciating why the Gaia Satellite accomplishment and the new map of the Milky Way is so amazing.
If you want to read a brief history of sky mapping, and gain some context for understanding this current accomplishment, checkout these links at the ESA Gaia website: Link1 Link2 Link3 Link4
For me this new image of 1.7 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy is the most amazing thing I have seen in my lifetime. It is the culmination of several thousand years of the human mind working alone and cooperatively developing the tools of science and engineering to better understand the natural world. We should look at the image and see the generations past and present that made all of this possible. It is a photo that took ages to take. We get to see it. Our solar system is in there as tiny specks in a sea of stars. We can now enjoy the image, smile and be amazed at the wonder of it all.
All of this makes umbrellas seem rather insignificant, however if the May rains kick up, we will probably find them quite important, relevant and useful under the wet distant starry skies!
Lloyd Cripe