At this time of year it is common to hear of “pintas” and “repintas” but very few know what they are.
This ancient popular tradition supposedly predicts the weather.
According to historian Vladimir de la Cruz, the Costa Rican folklore defines “pinta” as the weather behavior in the first 12 days of January, which marks the future weather conditions for each month of the year, and the next 6 days are subdivided to reaffirm the information.
This has no scientific backing, it’s just rooted in popular traditions in rural or agricultural floklore,”
said the historian, who also explained the name “pintas” comes from the expression “así pinta el mes” (it seems this month will be like this.)
So January 3rd would mark March, which is normally a hot month.
For Dionisio Cabal, writer and historian, this is a Hispanic tradition that has taken its place in popular practice. “It derives from the need of agricultural societies of yesteryear to have some kind of certainty about the weather, to plan their work.”
Pintas and repintas, he explained, come from a repeated observation of climate behavior generation after generation.
According to Werner Stolz, head of the IMN, the national folklore uses pintas for the weather forecast, but from a scientific point of view, there is no study that corroborates them, so they do not rely on them.