Torrential rain at the Karen Mogensen Reserve

In recent days, the rain gauge placed at the Biological and Meteoclimatic Station Italy Costa Rica has recorded truly torrential rains. We are in the rainy season, and June has an average rainfall of about 405 mm, so the abundant rains are not surprising in themselves, but certainly the first 8 days of the month were definitely wet.

From 1 to 8 June, our weather station recorded 276.4 mm of rain, with precipitation recorded every day. Consequently, the temperatures were not particularly high, only one day saw just above 30 ° C, on 5 with Tmax 30.1 ° C.

From the meteorological point of view, this situation was favored by the presence along Costa Rica and the Nicoya peninsula of the ITCZ, the tropical interconvergence zone, with the transit of various tropical waves.

The simultaneous presence of La Niña phase of moderate intensity should also be noted. La Niña means little girl in Spanish. La Niña is also sometimes called El Viejo, anti-El Niño, or simply “cold phase of El Niño”. La Niña has the opposite effect of El Niño. During the La Niña events, the trade winds are even stronger than usual, pushing more warm water into the Pacific Ocean towards Asia. In Costa Rica, on the other hand, it usually brings more abundant rains, especially in the Pacific sector.

In the few years of measurements we have available from our Station, we already clearly observed an excellent correlation between the ONI index provided by NOAA (an index based on the sea temperature in the Pacific Ocean, that, when negative indicates the presence of La Niña, instead if positive de El Niño).

The forest benefits from the rains!

Patricia Slump – President of Asepaleco intent on the collection of seedlings for the nursery

However, the forest has benefited from these abundant rains, there is an explosion of green, the branches show new leaves and the ground is teeming with new seedlings born from the seeds of even the most precious and rare tree species. We take the opportunity to collect the sprouted seedlings on the path or in places where they could not grow and bring them to our nursery..

World Environment Day

They will be used to continue the reforestation that we have already started to do in recent days with a group of students and volunteers in the newly acquired Paraiso sector, land also bought with the funds raised by FpS. More than three hundred seedlings grown in the nursery were planted in a beautiful initiative during the World Environment Day that served to involve and raise awareness among local young people on the importance of conserving their woods

Velo de Novia

Even the streams that were almost dry flow again bursting and the beautiful Velo de Novia waterfall has also taken advantage of it, which now shows itself in all its majesty.

Cafecillo (Erythrochiton gymnanthus)

Last note, no less interesting also for the naturalistic scientific aspect, the shrub-sapling of Cafecillo (Erythrochiton gymnanthus) is in full bloom, an endemic species of Costa Rica present only in the Karen Reserve as well as in the Carara National Park. It is a rare plant almost unknown for its biological and ecological characteristics that we are studying at the Bioclimatic Station.