# Who Pulled Tlaloc´s Chain?



## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

So here it was, March 15th - how could one imagine a better time to drive the 1,500 or so kilometers from Lake Chapala in West-Central Mexico to San Cristóbal de Las Casas in the Chiapas Highlands just up the road from the Guatemala border. After all, March in the región stretching from the lake to the Guatemalan border has consistently been one of the driest times of any year in our experience since we retired to Mexico 14 years ago and our route from Lake Chapala through Michoacan, the high Puebla Plain and down the dramatic escarpment at Orizaba to the Veracruz Coastal Plain and then back up the mountains as one enters Chiapas just after Coaxocoalcos on the Veracruz Coast, is one we have driven many times in all seasons with normally predictable weather patterns in both the dry and wet seasons. 

Well, this time Tláloc apparently had a thorn up his posterior and provided us with everything from heavy rains as we left the lake and tornados forming over Western Michoacan to copious rains and thunderstorms over Eastern Michoacan into the State of Mexico and on into Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Puebla and Veracruz States and back up the mountains from the Chiapas state line to just outside of the Chiapas capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez. And, folks, we are not talking chipi-chipi here but consistently heavy downpours - sheets of rain, actually, and winds such as we have never experienced even in the midst of the most formidable rainy season we have been witness to in the 14 year span we have been full-time residents here. Rains, winds and thunderclappers alternating with rains and ground-hugging fogs reducing visibility to dangerous levels. 

Now, I realize that writings about rains so formidable (accompanied by tornados in formation) that driving a car is especially hazadous may seem to be an odd phenomenon to warrant attention on a Mexico fórum to someone living in or once having lived in a región such as the Gulf Coast of the U.S. where I was raised and magnificent thunderstorms and tornado threats are recurring phenomena during much of each year but, folks, this kind of weather is almost unheard of the regions of which I write and this is especially true during the dry season normally represented by the month of March. 

By the way, these almost unheard of rainstorms during March in the región I describe follow a February that is easily the coldest February I have experienced at Lake Chapala since we moved here in 2001. I hope this odd weather is not a portent of things to come. 

Maybe we should have retired to Portugal of Colombia after all, as we once considered, before choosing Mexico largely for the climate.


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## vantexan (Sep 4, 2011)

As a FedEx courier who has worked all over the U.S. I have many times seen road markers that indicate in feet how high flood waters would be. And I've often heard of floods that approached or broke the "100 Year" flood record. And often on TV weather reports would refer to breaking a record set in 1912, or 1932, or...for rain, or snow, or tornadoes, or heat, etc. It's most likely you're seeing an aberration, and the weather you're used to will return next year. It's what makes weather so interesting IMHO.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Hound Dog said:


> . . .
> By the way, these almost unheard of rainstorms during March in the región I describe follow a February that is easily the coldest February I have experienced at Lake Chapala since we moved here in 2001. I hope this odd weather is not a portent of things to come.
> 
> Maybe we should have retired to Portugal of Colombia after all, as we once considered, before choosing Mexico largely for the climate.


If the world's climate is changing, then perhaps it is changing (for the worst, it seems) in Portugal and Colombia as well as in Mexico. In any event, we should all be grateful that we don't live in Vanuatu! Cyclone Pam: 24 confirmed dead as Vanuatu president blames climate change | World news | The Guardian


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## vantexan (Sep 4, 2011)

On the other hand there are climatologists who believe we're at the onset of a "mini ice age" similar to what was experienced in both the Middle Ages and in the late 1700's to middle 1800's due to the lack of solar flare/sun spot activity. Look up the "Maunder Minimum." If so southern Mexico might be a good place to be!


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

vantexan said:


> As a FedEx courier who has worked all over the U.S. I have many times seen road markers that indicate in feet how high flood waters would be. And I've often heard of floods that approached or broke the "100 Year" flood record. And often on TV weather reports would refer to breaking a record set in 1912, or 1932, or...for rain, or snow, or tornadoes, or heat, etc. It's most likely you're seeing an aberration, and the weather you're used to will return next year. It's what makes weather so interesting IMHO.


In any event, only time (and Tlaloc) will tell . . .


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Spanish doesn't distinguish between climate and weather, but English does for good reason. Extreme *weather* events (this is the fourth consecutive day of steady rain in Guadalajara) don't tell us anything about *climate*. The coldest winter, 1683-84, during the Little Ice Age cited by VanTexan was followed two years later by the fifth warmest winter in a 350 year series of measurements.

I will be glad when the sun comes back. The water in my solar system is barely lukewarm at this point. On a more typical day this time of year, it boils in the afternoon.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

This, from a geologist friend yesterday:

"Whether the weather be cold
Whether the weather be hot
Whether the weather be dry
Whether it raineth a lot
We must weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not

Meanwhile, who wants to go in on an ark building project? Anyone know how long a cubit is?


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## sparks (Jun 17, 2007)

‎El Niño and .... can you say global warming

From 10 to 14 inches measured around here over the 2.5 days. As much water as hurricane Jova in 2011


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## cuerna1 (Mar 7, 2015)

Not much rain here in the city of eternal spring - 5700 ft. It has been a little cloudy at times. Last night there was a 5 minute spritz at 4AM or so. In fact, we normally get the rain we get at night. I wish it would rain a little, the pool can use some water.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

_


cuerna1 said:



Not much rain here in the city of eternal spring - 5700 ft. It has been a little cloudy at times. Last night there was a 5 minute spritz at 4AM or so. In fact, we normally get the rain we get at night. I wish it would rain a little, the pool can use some water.

Click to expand...

_Well, here in San Cristobal de Las Casas at right on 7000 feet no claim is made as to eternal spring and when it rains from about May to September, the rain is, shall we say, significant and requires reckoning. However, rain in this área is practically unheard of during March and therefore,, when forthcomong in blitzes over a few days - worthy of note.

At Lake Chapala, rain normally comes at night as well but in San Cristóbal the rain, whenever it comes in the summer as it usually does in mid-afternoon, is incessant and prodigious. We chose to live here despite this propensity and can only say that one´s preference is one´s preference. Thank God we do not all long for the same place as that place would have become way too crowded long ago.


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