The 2022 hurricane season for Central American country, Costa Rica, is expected to be ‘slightly above normal’ with, 16 to 23 storms that will reach hurricane strength when the normal is 14 annual.
The season, which runs from June to November, will see the first three tropical storms being named Alex, Bonnie and Colin.
Costa Rica’s national weather service, the Instituto Meteorológico Nacional (IMN), forecasts that between four and seven of the tropical storms will intensify into hurricanes with winds of up to 177 kilometres per hour and of these. One or two will be major hurricanes (from 178 to 250 kilometres/hour or more).
How this season will impact Costa Rica, directly or indirectly, cannot be foreseen but Alexander Solís, president of the National Emergency Commission (CNE), affirmed that the organisation, through its local committees of emergencies and fed by data from IMN will remain ready for any eventuality. The data was provided on Wednesday (March 23) by IMN on the occasion of World Meteorological Day.
Early warning and early action
Under the slogan “early warning and early action”, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) highlighted the risk of disasters and how hydro-meteorological and climate information contributes to reducing them.
Last year, no cyclones affected Costa Rica.
Although hurricanes, due to their destructive capacity, are the phenomena that should be monitored the most, there are other events that can generate emergencies such as the one in Turrialba, which had not been seen for 50 years.
As for the 2022 rainy season, which will begin this weekend in the border area with Panama, and is expected to arrive in the Central Valley on May 5, the head of the department of Synoptic and Aeronautical Meteorology at the IMN, Eladio Solano, stressed that it will be strong in the starting months of May and June.
However, there is expected to be a pause in July and August with dry days in the middle of the rainy season, mainly in the Central Valley and the coastal areas of Guanacaste.
Solano recalled that last year was very irregular, because in some areas of Guanacaste, Golfito and the Caribbean coast they had rainfall deficits, while other areas such as Upala and Los Chiles were above normal.
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