The Winds

5 Febrero
In France they are called The Mistral and in the West, The Chinooks or Sirocco. The constant winds we are experiencing here in Central America are typical this time of year. A cold front heading in from the Caribbean added fuel to the fire, bringing winds of up to 100 kph (62 miles per hour) and they arrived with all the power of a wild stampede. It began yesterday afternoon with my screens popping out while leaves and other various forms of jungle debris skittered across my front terrace, and underneath my front door. The chaos of the winds delivered so much dust that it looked as though a full vacuum cleaner bag had exploded in my cottage. These winds are fierce and sustained and before the darkness descended, I located my flashlight and wisely kept it within reach. The darkness here is absolute although there is a prison in the distance that glows ominously 24/7. It houses some of the vilest criminals in Central America including former President Rafael Ángel Calderón, his cousin Alfonso Guardia, as well as ex-President Miguel Angel Rodriguez’s, ruthless drug lords and serial murderers ... not the most comforting beacon in the night. We rarely close our windows in our cottage. The eaves are deep enough to protect from the glare of the equatorial sun and provide shelter from the unremitting deluge that comes with the rains. Amid the clamor of the winds, I realized that my drapes had been sucked out of the windows, tearing the fixture from its anchor and as the bathroom door slammed shut, the house shuddered as if bracing itself for the continuing onslaught. The groaning and creaking of the lofty branches in the magnificent old trees surrounding my cottage made the dogs tense and uneasy. At 6:30, the power flickered, dimmed and came back…at 6 40, the power flickered, dimmed, flickered once more and finally died, leaving us suspended in the inky darkness. Closing more windows, the ensuing silence gave forth to the peculiar sounds of the jungle shifting and bending to the powerful, relentless winds. This morning, I picked up a few more screens and discovered that the eerie scraping and sliding we heard the previous night were the tiles blowing off the roof. The electricity had yet to be restored and, from past experience, I knew I could wait for days. Walking up the mountain to my neighbor’s house in search of coffee, I spotted parts of our graceful ancient trees lying shattered on the dirt lane and looked warily about, certain that at any moment, one of those majestic trees were going to fall upon my head.

Tehuantepecer wind
Tehuantepecers are extreme wind events in Central America, when cold air masses from the arctic slide south all the way across the United States into the Gulf of Mexico. The cold, dense air is trapped on the Atlantic side of Central America by the fairly high, continuous mountain ranges found there. These mountain ranges make a very effective wall that keeps this air from crossing Central America and reaching the Pacific

Many times, a Tehuano wind is followed by Papagayo and Panama winds a few days later as the high pressure system moves south.
In the Central American winter, they feel Tehuanos and Papagayos: gale-force winds from the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea that funnel through narrow breaks in the Cordillera, gusting to wind speeds normally found only in major hurricanes.