About the weather

Another week with out flying up the mountains.. The weather in Lima this time of the year is utterly depressing. Here we call that persistent grey cloud base that cover us for months  "panza de burro" or donkey's belly. not quite dark, not sunny, just a dim uniform white light from above.


To best use the time (and to beat the boredom of being stuck to the ground) we payed a visit to SENHAMI , the national weather agency in Peru.

The agency has a customer service (Servicio al consumidor) department where they welcomed us with  real interest on our project and loads of useful information about the weather conditions along our route
.

The image above comes from their website, and it shows the sad state (For soaring that is) of the coast of Peru this time of the year.

They where so helpful we ended spending more than an hour just talking about possible sites for soaring conditions in Peru and our experiences as free flight pilots with winds and thermals .

Something that surprised them, was hearing about the convergence of the Morro Solar  and how, in some lucky days we (paraglider pilots)  can get up to 1800 feet msl, by using the lift generated from the converging currents that meet back behind the landmark mountain in the area.

Finally, when I asked about RAOB or soundings, we learned of the limited resources they have to work with. For a territory the size of Peru, the only soundings done in the country are at Jorge Chavez Airport (SPIM).

In any case it was a great visit and a good resource for weather information in Peru.