Arenal Kayaks Tours on Lake Arenal, Costa Rica

We get lots of hits from the search engines about Lake Arenal Weather.

Let's see, this is the middle of October and we've had 5.2" of rain for the month. Last year we had 12" by this time and 33.5" for the month! Could mean that we'll be seeing a lot more rain before the month is out.

Our weather has been affected by El Niño this year so we're experiencing abnormal patterns. Lots of sunshine and hot temperatures but some rain almost every day. Many days there's a huge storm over on the Pacific side that doesn't reach us but gives us a good light show and rumbling thunder.

The time of day for rain fluctuates so for a few days we'll wake up to showers but then clearing skies for the remainder of the day. These kind of days usually produce a spectacular sunset. Other days we have morning sun and late afternoon showers. These are nice because the evenings cool down after a bit of rain. But we can't predict from one day to the next which pattern we'll get and we don't really get upset about being caught in a shower while on the lake.

One nice feature of paddling during or after a rain shower is the calming effect on the surface. Many times we've put in with clouds looming and a good breeze blowing. The lake can be quite churned up in these cases even to the extent that there will be whitecaps out in the open water. But then the clouds blow in and drop some rain (sometimes a lot!) and the lake becomes almost glass making the paddle home very pleasant.

The lake level, however, is receding rapidly. Not enough rain to keep up with the discharge being used to generate electricity, the real purpose of the reservoir after all. Some expect the level to approach the lows we saw 2-years ago when it was down something like 15 meters. While we enjoy paddling up the rivers when the level is high, we also like the lower levels when we can explore the beach areas for 2,000 year old artifacts. The level isn't down far enough for much of that yet and the island in the middle of the lake is barely showing enough to get out and explore plus the cane grass has overtaken the exposed part of the island. If the lake goes down much more we would expect to have some exposed beach areas out there again.

What will November bring? Pretty tough to tell and we normally expect 30+" of rain for the month. But we'll just have to wait and see. Keep your eye on the (almost daily) Lake Cam to see for yourself what our weather looks like. And be sure to let us know when you'll be visiting so we can reserve a nice morning or afternoon to go paddling!