Forecasters predict potential flooding throughout the Caribbean this Christmas
The Barbados-based Caribbean Institute for Meteorology & Hydrology (CIMH) is warning the area that current heavy rains may proceed into December and pose a threat for flooding throughout probably the most joyous seasons of the yr.
“This yr, flooding is an even bigger threat in December than in different years,” CIMH climatologist Cédric Van Meerbeeck informed the Caribbean Media Company (CMC) concerning the regional outlook for the dry season, which begins December 1.
“I’m not saying it’s going to flood in your space, however what I’m saying is hold checking the climate reviews in your nation to ensure that that doesn’t occur to you, with out you figuring out about it.”
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Chatting with CMC on the Caribbean Local weather Outlook Discussion board (CariCOF), going down by means of Friday, Van Meerbeeck cautioned that whereas Christmas is historically a interval the place folks wish to assume joyous issues and “may not at all times pay as a lot consideration to the climate as we usually would in the course of the hurricane season, for example”, heavy rains in December are usually not exceptional.
He reminded that in 2013, Christmas Eve floods led to dying and destruction in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia.
Van Meerbeeck mentioned no main droughts are forecast for any a part of the area in the course of the upcoming dry season.
“That’s a constructive however, alternatively, we’re getting out of the moist season with soils that, in lots of locations, are fairly drenched. In order that signifies that if within the subsequent weeks we get a whole lot of rainfall, though we’re getting into the dry season, we would nonetheless see flash floods wherever that excessive rainfall happens,” he defined.
He mentioned these with the best threat are the southern islands.
“So, within the ABC islands of Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, in Trinidad and Tobago, in Grenada, in Barbados, after which much less in order you go additional north.”
The climatologist mentioned the globe is experiencing La Niña – a metrological occasion the place floor temperatures or ocean temperatures within the Pacific are cooler than regular – which tends to “affect our climate patterns on the seasonal timescale right here”.
He famous that in La Niña, the Caribbean sometimes experiences wetter years in addition to a stronger finish a part of the hurricane season.
“So, from September till October, we have now a whole lot of methods passing by means of the area,” he mentioned, including that La Nina is among the predominant causes for that.
“The subsequent factor that occurs is, thankfully for us, the warmth was not as tremendously an issue this yr because it’s been, for example, in 2021 when the other sample occurred.”
Farmers within the area had been warned to pay shut consideration to the climate patterns,
“We have to put together for flooding, we have to put together for the possibility of getting regionally drier situations which could affect agriculture. However I believe the larger threat for agriculture, particularly within the southeastern Caribbean, goes to be crop injury due to flooding,” he mentioned.
CMC/