#WisdomoftheWEEK - Apparently Costa Rica Doesn't Get Hit By Hurricanes
Bet the title caught ya, didn't it? Good. Because I've just got done doing a metric shit ton about research into why Costa Rica apparently isn't all that susceptible to hurricanes. Let's dive in....
VoyEdge RX has nine people leaving for our first ever Costa Rica tour in two days time, and with Hurricane Irma strengthening into a Category 5 Hurricane and barreling right into every Caribbean island possible, I was a bit worried we might have to cancel our trip, and so were our customers.
Truthfully, the timing couldn't have been worse. We're on a roll with many of our trips, and we're improving with each one, so it was unfortunate to have to even deal with this and sort it out, but with acts of God, and forces of nature, I guess it was only a matter of time before something like this would happen? Right?
Anyway, naturally, as soon as I started looking into this, the comment section of TripAdvisor's question of, 'Does Costa Rica get hit by Hurricanes' kind of eased my mind....
Wait, fuck...we're going to the Caribbean side. Our entire trip is based on going to Cashew Hill Jungle Lodge, a yoga studio based on the hill of Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. Well, that's not good....could Hurricane Irma be the one who gets away and affects our Costa Rica trip?
The last thing we want is for any of our customers to spend a week being rained on, and not being able to enjoy themselves, workout, or go out while on vacation, so what should we do?
That's when Ashley, Nolan and I started looking into Hurricane Irma and really educating ourselves on the entire issue. Turns out, there have only been a total of 9 actual hurricanes that have ever even AFFECTED Costa Rica. You can check all of those out through the beginning of time here. And beyond that, it turns out there was only ONE hurricane that actually killed anyone in Costa Rica, and that was in November 2016 and was Hurricane Otto, which claimed 9 lives while it fanned out over Central America.
As unfortunate as it is, no one wants to hear that their vacation might be affected by a Hurricane, but that's the law of nature sometimes. It's unpredictable and there's very little we can actually do about it. So, with that in mind, we immediately started looking into how Irma could affect Central America, and that's when we found out there are actually two smaller hurricanes behind Irma, that could go anywhere, as well as another tropical storm affecting Mexico right now....fuck. So, with all those elements combined, Nolan dove in to find the answers if it could affect Costa Rica, especially on the Caribbean side, where we are going from September 9th-16th, and here's what he found:
I kinda left it up to Nolan there, since he's much more of the adventurer and researcher than I am, but the following articles calmed my mind from the fact that Costa Rica is probably safe from the storms.
The gist of the two articles was this:
"In addition, hurricanes that form in the Caribbean are not likely to turn toward Costa Rica. Caribbean tropical storms either turn northward or continue westward due to the steering currents of trade winds from the east, then a clockwise flow around a semi-permanent area of high pressure to the north. This has a tendency to turn them northward away from Central America.
Costa Rica is located at 9.55 degrees north of the equator, below the path of most hurricanes. There are seven tropical cyclone zones “basins” where storms occur on a regular basis and Costa Rica is not located in the affected areas."
And also this was pretty damn convincing...
"Hurricanes in the southern Costa Rica region are a myth!
Another in a long list of myths about the Southern Caribbean region. In fact, by definition, it is impossible to have hurricanes here.
We are located at the 9.6th latitude, below the 10th parallel. Except in extreme exceptions, hurricanes can NOT go below the 10th parallel! In other words, it is almost impossible for us to ever get hit by a hurricane.
I have not been able to find any mention of our region ever coming close to getting directly hit by a hurricane, neither is it particularly vulnerable to other hurricanes – out there.
Some VIP Members emailed to say that Hurricane Gert and Tropical Storm Bret hit us in 1993 but they did not…
and the seas are sun is shiningWe are one of the very few locations of the entire Caribbean Basin that are actually immune from hurricanes. In extreme cases, we may the feel secondary effects such as some sub tropical force winds or an increase in rain, but even this time with such a big storm visiting our northern neighbor the Puravida!
tranquilo!
Written by VIP Member Manuel Pinto.
Long story short, I guess we'll be looking forward to blue skies, calm winds and some excellent vibes down in Puerto Viejo. And if there's someone I would believe about hurricanes not hitting Costa Rica, it'd definitely be a local. We'll take our chances, and fingers crossed for an amazing week and another awesome VoyEdge RX tour!
See you in February? 8 more spots left for Costa Rica in February 2018.
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