Central American Rainfall

U NTIL recently Central America has been sadly deficient in meteorological coverage. The situation was improved by Wernstedt's excellent collection of temperature and rainfall averages' from stations in Latin America and the Caribbean, among them 320 in Central America. But serious gaps still remain in northern Guatemala, eastern Honduras, most of Nicaragua, and parts of Panama. In the present paper Wernstedt has been supplemented by other sources,2 which have made it possible to extend the analyses into the areas mentioned, but future work will certainly modify these preliminary results. The complex terrain of Central Americarugged mountains, volcanic peaks, long serrate ridges, high plateaus, and narrow coastal plains-makes extrapolation and interpolation questionable, even for very short distances. Comparison of data and analyses presented here with earlier climatological studies may lead to the conclusion that we know less of Central America's climate at present than we knew a short time ago. This paradox arises because several principles formerly used in interpolation to bridge observational gaps have been shattered by new evidence, but this same new evidence is not sufficient to formulate better principles. Central America is an open field for climatological research. Since temperature and winds are less variable in tropical countries than