October  3, 2021

No.150

September 2021
(Back Issues Here)

We had 13.76 inches of rain at the Palmira Arriba Station in September of 2021.  This is somewhat below average rainfall for the month of September based on the 16 years we have been measuring. The reports from around the District of Boquete for September indicate a lot of variability of rainfall in the district. 

Rainfall for September 2021
Area	Contributors	September 2021	Total 2021
El Salto Arriba	Beth Corwin	8.23	n/a
El Santuario	Robert Boyd	8.38	76.79
El Santuario	Rodrigo Marciacq	7.89	68.58
Barriade Las Flores	Bill Brick	7.52	71.55
Jaramillo Arriba	Steve Sarner	19.13	126.46
Jaramillo Arriba	Mark Heyer	15.1	99.49
Jaramillo Central	Dave Nichols	19.54	108.93
Jaramillo Abajo	Don Berkowitz	25.81	127.60
Jaramillo Abajo	Bobi McGann	19.92	118.82
Palo Alto	Nancy Pettersen	11.19	108.89
Valle Escondido	Doug Remsen	9.17	60.13
Brisas  Boquetenas	Austin Perry	n/a	n/a
Brisas Boquetenas	Richard Sturtz	n/a	n/a
Los Molinos	Sela Burkholder	36.83	134.46
El Encanto (Volcancito)	Brian Baldwin	10.89	n/a
Cerro Verde (Volcancito)	Charlotte Lintz	9.94	n/a
Santa Lucia	Paula Litt	16.97	103.71
Caldera	Chris Mccall	17.16	86.56
Lucero	Michael Mullin	46.40	185.80
Boquete Country Club	Paul Arrandale	20.34	104.73
Palmira Abajo	Betty Gray	21.41	94.46
Palmira Arriba	Lloyd Cripe	13.76	78.64
El Banco	Laura Daniels	36.45	n/a

The highest rainfall for August 2021 in the District of Boquete was reported by Michael Mullin at Lucero with 46.40 inches. This is a lot of rain!  Sela Burkholder also reported a high rainfall at Los Molinos with 36.83 inches. She reported that their lawn was like a swimming pool. Note that these locations are in  areas south of Bajo Boquete as you head south toward David. The lowest rainfalls for the month were reported by Bill Brick at Barriade Las Flores with 7.52 inches and Rodrigo Marciacq in El Santuario at 7.89 inches. 

You can look for yourself at a graph of rain data for all the months over the course of the years I have published our rain data and see how this last month compares.  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 15 years as well as other weather variables. The Palmira Arriba Station recorded 13.76 inches in September. This chart shows the statistics for September from 2007 to 2021. 

Note that our Palmira station recorded a bit less than a standard deviation of rain below the mean (-0.8 standard deviations) for September. 

The latest ENSO Cycle Report is saying that "ENSO-neutral conditions are present. Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are near-to-below average across most of the Pacific Ocean. A transition from ENSO-neutral to La Niña is favored in the next couple of months, with a 70-80% chance of La Niña during the Northern Hemisphere winter 2021-22."

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.

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 below normal levels of precipitation for the months of October-November-December 2021 (yellow areas).

ETESA's hydrology and meteorology section is predicting that Chiriqui will have mixed levels of precipitation during September, October and November of 2021. You can read their report and check out the details for Chiriqui in the "documents" section at this link. 

In August the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Group I issued the Sixth Assessment Report on Climate Change. This is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.  If you want to know the current science and facts about climate change, read this report. My opinion is that this is the best information we have as layman regarding the facts and science of climate change as well as the guidelines for governmental policies to hopefully deal with this challenge. Don't bug me about this matter of climate change unless you are a qualified climate scientist or have at least followed and read the IPCC reports. 

At the moment the worldometer reports 235,904,989 cases of COVID worldwide with 4,818,649 deaths and 212,824,847 recovered cases.  The USA has 44,522,832 total cases with 719,945 total deaths and 33,938,147 recovered cases. According to the Johns Hopkins website, in the U.S. weekly cases and deaths have been on the increase mostly related to the Delta variant of the virus.

The U.S. has now gone over 700,000 deaths from COVID19.  Regardless of your personal views, that is undeniably a lot of people. This is more than died in the 1918 flu epidemic. Most of the recent deaths from COVID19 have been related to the Delta variant in unvaccinated people. To get some sense of how many people in total have died in the U.S. from COVID19, check this out.  Also check out this stunning photo. 

The Panama case data reports seem to be quite limited.  Although some have pointed me toward possible resources of Panama data, I don't think that we really know the number of cases and deaths in this country and its various Provinces. It appears that more are being vaccinated and the COVID situation is improving along with more related controls. 

MONITORING CORONAVIRUS STATUS LINKS 

October is often our heaviest rain month. Go with the flow. The rain forest needs the rain to do what it does. Some find it imperitive to go out of couintry and find some sunshine in October.  Do what you have to but if you stick around here, keep the umbrellas in hand and enjoy the sun when it often shows up in the mornings.

Lloyd Cripe

lcripe@boqueteweather.com