December 3, 2021

No.152

November 2021
(Back Issues Here)

November 2021 weather did what we expected.  There was a reduced amount of rain and more wind.  We had 5.92 inches of rain at the Palmira Arriba Station.  The reports from around the District of Boquete for November indicate less rainfall throughout the district after a wet October. We are moving toward the dry season. 

Rainfall for November 2021
Area	Contributors	November 2021	Total 2021
El Salto Arriba	Beth Corwin	7.33	n/a
El Santuario	Robert Boyd	6.20	103.92
El Santuario	Rodrigo Marciacq	6.35	95.51S
Barriade Las Flores	Bill Brick	6.74	99.79
Jaramillo Arriba	Steve Sarner	9.95	175.97
Jaramillo Arriba	Mark Heyer	8.48	137.16
Jaramillo Central	Dave Nichols	8.85	155.08
Jaramillo Abajo	Don Berkowitz	7.98	135.58
Jaramillo Abajo	Bobi McGann	7.81	171.37
Palo Alto	Nancy Pettersen	7.45	134.26
Valle Escondido	Doug Remsen	7.56	91.35
Brisas  Boquetenas	Austin Perry	7.00	n/a
Brisas Boquetenas	Dennis DeCorte	n/a	n/a
Brisas Boquetenas	Richard Sturtz	6.25	n/a
Los Molinos	Sela Burkholder	6.94	173.35
El Encanto (Volcancito)	Brian Baldwin	6.93	n/a
Cerro Verde (Volcancito)	Charlotte Lintz	6.75	n/a
Santa Lucia	Paula Litt	5.99	136.84
Caldera	Chris Mccall	12.33	157.75
Lucero	Michael Mullin	n/a	237.86
Boquete Country Club	Paul Arrandale	6.00	148.38
Palmira Abajo	Betty Gray	5.50	127.03
Palmira Arriba	Lloyd Cripe	5.92	110.46
El Banco	Laura Daniels	7.13	n/a

The Palmira Arriba Station this year recorded 5.92 inches of rain in November. This chart shows the statistics for Novembers from 2007 thru 2021.  The mean rainfall is 11.63 inches with a standard deviation of 8.97 inches and a range from 1.50 to 31.50 inches.  You can see that our 5.92 inches this month is near the mean with only 3 inches below it. 

Palmira Arriba Station Rainfall for November 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 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 conditions. La Niña is likely to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2021-22 (~90% chance) and into spring 2022 (~50% chance during March-May)."

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.

Once again, I want to 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 December-January-February 2022 (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. You can read their report and check out the details for Chiriqui in the "documents" section at this link.

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 notification of the report.  You can practice your Spanish skills by watching it!

Normally in November we start getting more NE Trade winds.  With the winds come some debris moisture from the Caribbean side of the mountains that is called El Bajareque.  It is a mist of rain but can at times be quite heavy.  This becomes the main source of our precipitation during November, December and January as we transition into the dry season. With this mist, at times when the angle of the sunshine is just right, we can get spectacular rainbows. Below is a double rainbow that we saw on November 30 at 07:45 from our north facing window that looks at Baru. It was a big wow experience!  So the price we pay for some Bajareque mist is some breath taking rainbows.  I think it is worth it!

  (click on image for a larger view)

 

COVID INFORMATION

MONITORING CORONAVIRUS STATUS LINKS 

At the moment the worldometer reports 265,068,665 cases of COVID worldwide with 5,256,544 deaths and 238,819,359 recovered cases.  The USA has 49,818,686 total cases with 807,548 total deaths and 39,432,285 recovered cases. Imagine 5,256,544 dead human beings in the world (most probably an underestimation) and 807,548 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 it is some sort of infringement of their personal freedom 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. Public health requires this cooperative stance. This is no time for stubborn rebelliousness.

There is now a new variant of the virus emerging raising further concern about whether or not the current vaccinations alone are adequate for the occasion.  Further research is ongoing to discover the details.  One thing is certain, those who are not vaccinated are especially vulnerable. Most COVID deaths occur among the unvaccinated.  I don't personally know one vaccinated person who has died from COVID.  I know several unvaccinated persons who have died from COVID.  Be sure to get your booster shots and if you aren't already vaccinated, please do what is best for you and others, and get yourself vaccinated.

I did a couple of foolish things last week.  I went to a volunteer appreciation luncheon with my wife. It was with Boquete Health and Hospice and was held at the Tapout bar/grill in Bajo Boquete.  We left our farm in Palmira Arriba with good weather and when we got to the Tapout there was lot of wind with a heavy Bajareque.  I left the car without an umbrella and when we got to the entry table to present our tickets, I realized that I didn't have my mask on.  I had to go back to the car and get the mask. The round trip without umbrella exposed me to a lot of precipitation.  The moral of this story is, that although the overall amount of rain is down, don't go anywhere without your mask and umbrella.  Fortunately, I have finally dried out.  In the future I will try to not forget these important items.  Keep this in mind as you wander about the District of Boquete, especially in Bajo Boquete and further north where the Bajareque is often the heaviest.

Lloyd Cripe

lcripe@boqueteweather.com