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Costa Rica Travel Information: Weather |
Simple information among the complex weather in Costa Rica |
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Photography and text by Javier Martin |
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You will visit a tropical country, this means among temperature, that it will remain basically the same through out the year (we don’t have annual global seasons close to the equator), now, the temperature variation does happen but during the day, with low temperature at night and during early morning and high during noon. |
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Costa Rica is particularly special among weather considering its small size; 52,000 square kilometers (similar to West Virginia).
You may find an average of 22 degrees C (72 degrees F) for inland at mid elevations (Central Plateau where the Capital San José and other major cities are) and temperature will increase considerably in the coastal areas, will drop considerably at the highlands where cloud forest is found. So depending on your travel itinerary, you will need from very light cloth –including sandals and shorts if visiting the coast- to cold weather coat if you plan to visit volcanoes like Irazú, Poas or other highlands, like many of the places at the Talamanca mountain range and other mountain ranges in Costa Rica. |
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Important to consider is that –as it has happened to me many times- that at the pinnacle of high mountains or volcanoes in Costa Rica, weather is highly unstable, turning from cold to hot and vice versa within less than an hour.
There is a well-defined dry season in Costa Rica but FOR THE PACIFIC SLOPE ONLY; it goes from mid November to early May. The rest of the year you may expect sunny mornings with rainy afternoons for this slope. |
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| Some times there are long lasting periods of time with heavy rains both during morning and afternoon, these are the so called “Temporales” and may last several days, both in Caribbean or Pacific slopes, but the last one only during the rainy season and especially between August and October. |
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For the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica, there is not a well defined dry season, weather is highly unpredictable, it may rain for a while and suddenly the sun comes out, there are some periods of time over the year with several days of bright sun and no rain, but these never follow a regular pattern, regardless these facts, you may expect these periods of time specially between August and October (exactly the time where there is more rain on the pacific slope) this is a very interesting phenomena that is related to the decrease of northern trade winds from the Atlantic Ocean and interaction of continental Costa Rica with the Pacific Ocean’s weather instead during these months. |
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One step deeper to understand weather in Costa Rica is to consider the very irregular topography found here, with many different altitudinal levels of mountains and volcanoes that cross the country from Northwest to Southeast, these become colder as you ascend the mountain but their different levels of interaction with the northern trade winds (during part of the year) produce many different forms of wind shades, and these a big number of microclimates.
So be ready to enjoy your trip to Costa Rica with this travel information. |
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