Posted by: senorwx | October 1, 2011

Memories of a September Past

Did the rain disappoint? Did you miss Av. Tercer Mundo as a raging river? Did you miss living on an island called San Pancho? Did you miss your zipline trip to the outside world?

If your answer to any of those questions was positive, then you should not have been in San Francisco, Nayarit, Mexico last month. Because in spite of a few heavy downpours and the ensuring mess of mud and palapa sludge, it was a rather normal month for the rainy season. Three inches of rain does a record not make.

Stormy Day at the San Pancho Beach

A Stormy September Day at the San Pancho Beach

We did record our high heat index “feels like” temperature for the year in September: 111.7° at about 2 p.m. on the 23rd. And nearly reached the actual high temperature for the year with 91.8° on the 25th. (The high for the year to date is still the 92.1° on August 18.)

OK. Before I close, we must talk about total rainfall. Only about 3 inches for the month. September last year, 28 inches!

We are on track to have a total annual rainfall of less than 40 inches. (We had that much at the end of September 2010.) But that isn’t a big deviation from the norm. The total was 39 inches in ’09, and 44 inches in ’08. So if you ignore last year, we are back to a normal range of rainfall.

It’s very unlikely that we’ll reach the 56 inch annual total of last year. We are, after all, approaching the end of the rainy season in San Pancho.

Aren’t we?

Posted by: senorwx | August 31, 2011

August in San Pancho, Mexico

This was an August much like most Augusts, with the exception of that heavy downpour mentioned in the previous post on this blog.

Here’s a graphical picture of when the rains came:

August 2011 Rainfall in San Pancho - San Francisco, Mexico

August 2011 Rainfall in San Pancho - San Francisco, Mexico

I must advise you that I’ve had several inquiries about our rainfall amount this month, which totaled just a bit over 12 inches. (It was 13 inches last August here.) One friend said that Puerto Vallarta experienced 35 inches of rain this month, another said there was 20 inches to the north of us.

Well, I can’t vouch for the source of that data, but the official weather station at the airport in Puerto Vallarta indicates 18 inches of rain there, so our 12.3 is certainly within the ballpark. Don’t know where the higher figure came from. If you do, please let me know.

The San Pancho rainfall for the year is more than 30 inches, while at this time last year we’d already recorded 50 inches. I guess we are all a little shaky that last year might be repeated here in our serene little village with a brand-new bridge.

Was it hot in August? Need you ask? We set the record for the year to date: 92.1 °F on August 18 at 10:28 AM. The highest temperature on record at the San Pancho Weather Station was 93.2 °F August 26, 2009 at 10:45 AM.

Posted by: senorwx | August 20, 2011

Le Déluge

It was like Mother Nature opened her bathtub drain right over San Pancho in the wee small hours of Friday the 19th of August. More than four inches of rain fell in that single storm. To be exact: 4.07 inches.

It started about 1:45 a.m. and lasted till 5, with a half hour break at 3:15. That’s 4.07 inches in three hours. More than an inch of rain (on the ground, in the pool, in some rooms, on the street) every one of those hours in San Francisco, Nayarit, Mexico.

For the record, Puerto Vallarta recorded less than three inches of rain on the 19th.

What’s even more remarkable about this storm in San Pancho is that the rain came down at a rate of more than 10 inches/hour at several points between 4 and 4:30 a.m.! A quick check indicates that’s the highest rainfall rate at the San Pancho Weather Station in five years of record keeping. The rate peaked at 10.87 in/hr at 4:20.

Rainfall Rate in San Francsico, Nayarit August 19, 2011

Wind speeds averaged one to six mph during the storm, with gusts up to 22 mph during that 4 a.m. downpour. Several folks also report the accompanying thunder during this event is the loudest, biggest, noisiest they’ve ever heard. We don’t have a device mounted on the Weather Station to record the intensity of the thunder. But every dog in town was dug in for the night.

Does this portend another record rainfall this year in San Pancho? Unlikely, but you never know. For the record, as of August 19, total rain is 8.28 inches compared to 13.24 inches last year. As for the annual rainfall totals, we are still about 20 inches shy of our record-breaking 2010 rains!

And we still have our bridge. That’s a good sign.

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