Your fall haul may be delayed… Over 200 cargo ships are stuck in the Panama Canal, where some have been waiting weeks to cross. Refresher: the Panama Canal is the only major waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. About 3% of global trade and 29% of the Pacific’s container trade passes through it. The jam started last month after the canal’s transit authority capped the number of vessels that could cross each day (and how much cargo they could carry) to conserve water.
Drought: A drought has sapped much of the freshwater required by the canal’s unique system of locks that move ships through the canal.
Reroute: Ship owners can lighten their loads or seek alt routes, but it adds thousands of miles to their journeys.
Bleak Friday… The gumming-up of the Panama Canal is causing delivery delays and soaring shipping prices, just as carriers were starting to ferry over Black Friday and holiday goods. Analysts say disruptive events like this (recall: the Suez Canal’s Ever Given drama in 2021) show the fragility of the hyper-fast-delivery model consumers are now used to. Climate change is expected to make these weather-related disruptions more frequent.
The weather this year is frightful… The Panama Canal Authority said the drought has “no historical precedence,” partly because this is supposed to be the region’s rainy season. Meanwhile, the Rhine River, a key European shipping route, hit its lowest water level for the year last month. The situation could worsen with the arrival of El Niño, a weather phenomenon that warms the Pacific's surface and often causes extreme weather (including less rainfall in Panama).