Very little air is rising in the Nearctic Hemisphere. Practically all is high pressure with lower central America being relatively low @1016 mb compared to the desert high pressure over the Atlantic @1024 mb. It is Not raining anywhere in Mexico nor in central America including Panama. It is not raining anywhere in the Caribbean nor in northern Colombia, none(!) of Venezuela nor in Guyana, Surinam nor French Guiana. Likewise northeastern Brazil. That is a lot! So where is it raining? Heavily along the western slopes of the Andes from southern Colombia Ecuador Peru and down through Bolivia and into northern Argentina. The rains come out a bit along the Pacific coast of South America but NO massive floods and rains yet such as occurred in the 1983 in coastal Peru and Chile. The Amazonian rains stretch eastward from the Andes over much of the southern portion of Brazil and northern Bolivia. A firm temperature inversion has not yet formed over Panama so that some of the local convection (rising warm moist air) will come back down as local sprinkles to occasional downpour".-Neal Smith <SMITHN@tivoli.si.edu>