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Best time to cruise the Panama?


Karen Lynn
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And rainy season does not necessarily mean lots of rain. We crossed the canal in November 2013 and had a lot of grey skies but only one short shower.

 

Hmmm....as Panama is almost half tropical rainforest, and the Canal requires huge volumes of water to operate, you can bet there is lots of rain there. But that doesn't state it will rain every day.

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I watch the ships go through daily, and there has been lots of rain this year. It's rare I see a totally sunny transit. I was on a rainy transit in Jan. and we had a little bit of rain on a partial in Jan last year. EM

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Either day is fine but yes as CruiserBruce mentions it is the rainy season.

 

With that said we've cruised then and it was still a nice experience and we have cruised this route many times between January and March as well.

 

Keith

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October 25 - 15 nights or Nov 9 also 15 nights .

Any difference?

I know ideally - Sep / Oct have less rains..

 

There won't be a huge difference between those two dates although the closer you get to December the weather trends towards less rain. My last 3 full transits through the Canal have in the late October early November time frame and rain was a very minor issue on one of them... a 15 minute shower that opened up all the prime viewing spots and clogged the dinning venues;p!

 

Rainy season runs from late April to late December.

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  • 2 months later...

Can I assume that hurricanes are not an issue? I'm cruising the PC in early October on Celebrity and one person recently posted that they had cancelled the cruise and rescheduled for December to avoid hurricanes. Looking at the map, it seems like the only risk for them would be on the stretch to or from Florida.

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The Canal itself is not in the hurricane area. But sailing from Florida is. So if avoiding hurricanes is an issue, you sail December-May.

 

You can also have hurricanes off the Pacific coast into October. More in the Mexico area.

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Can I assume that hurricanes are not an issue? I'm cruising the PC in early October on Celebrity and one person recently posted that they had cancelled the cruise and rescheduled for December to avoid hurricanes. Looking at the map, it seems like the only risk for them would be on the stretch to or from Florida.

 

While there is a possibility that there may be less of a chance of rain in the December trip compared to the October cruise, but then again weather is replete with exceptions. Just a few years ago the Canal was closed for close to 24 hours because torrential rains and the accompanying floods. This is one of the handful of times that the Canal actually shut down in its over 100 years of operation an it was December. Last year in late November, tropical storm Otto formed off Colon and later developed into a hurricane that did not impact Panama directly. While it was a tropical storm, one of the Princess ships on a partial transit was forced to spend a extra day in the Canal because of Otto. Even though hurricane season ends in November and Panama's Dry Season begins in December, often times you can encounter weather extremes at the beginning and ends of seasons.

 

Long range plans around the weather is usually tilting at windmills.;) Just make plans and enjoy what comes.

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