El único Panamá - Week 37

Welcome to our weekly series about the uniqueness of Panama!

Photo: EPA

Panama rarely experiences the impact of tropical cyclones!

Panamanians are accustomed to heavy rains, strong winds and mudslides during rainy season but it does not usually experience direct hits from tropical cyclones.

Hurricane Martha, on November 1969, made landfall in Veraguas Province, Panama, as a strong tropical storm.

Hurricane Otto, November 2016 is one of the few storms to impact countries rarely affected by tropical cyclones. It made history as the first hurricane to hit Nicaragua and Costa Rica in recorded history. It didn’t make landfall in Panama, but the torrential rains it dumped on Panama were responsible for lot of damage and loss of life from the flooding and downed trees.

Did you know....?

The difference between a hurricane, a cyclone, and a typhoon is the location where the storm occurs. They are all the same weather phenomenon, different names for these storms are used in different places. The term “hurricane” is used in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific,