While we were at Ricardito Espinosa’s birthday party yesterday, I asked Ricardo if we could look at his rainfall data. He has precipitation and temperature records going back to 1992! Too much for me to handle yesterday, but what we did do was look at July’s records for those 16 years.
It was fascinating. With the exception of 1998, rainfall for July ranged from 13 to 20 inches; in 1998, it was 29 inches. As of yesterday, July 19, with 12 days more to go in the month, the rainfall for July of this year is 30 inches. On Wednesday, when the skies opened up and the water poured down, we had 4.6 inches of rain.
Addressing the endless speculation as to which is wetter, Boquete or Potrerillos Arriba: as of July 19, Lloyd Cripe’s station has recorded just under 23 inches of rain for the month. On Wednesday, July 16, his station recorded 2.56 inches of rain compared to our 4.6 inches.
A more thorough comparison is going to have to wait until I am able to copy the monthly totals for every year for which Ricardo has data. Even then, Lloyd’s station has only been in operation for a little over a year, I believe. That still will make for an interesting comparison.
When I get the data, I think I’ll post it on a separate page.
