"June to November, June to November..." - every Belizean knows that the 1st of June signals the start of hurricane season.
And this year, it's gonna be a rough one. The National Meteorological Service is predicting that the season will see above-normal activity. And while we can't be sure if Belize will be affected, the MET service and NEMO are cautioning Belizeans to be prepared.
At a press conference held today at NEMO Headquarters in Belmopan, Chief Meteorologist, Ronald Gordon, explained what this season will look like:
Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist
"When we speak of tropical cyclone activity, we look at 2 factors, one of those is whether there is going to be an el nino or la nina and the other how warm the sea surface temperatures are in the Atlantic basin. The first factor this year is indicating that we are unlikely to have an el nino and more likely to have la nina conditions. Briefly, an el nino situation would tend of suppress activity because of the fact that you'd have more storms developing over the eastern Pacific Ocean and when those storms develop, they tend to vent a lot of strong breeze that at the higher levels of the atmosphere and resulting in what we called wind shear which will tear tropical systems apart. On the contrary, la nina, you would have less activity on that size, therefore less vertical wind shear and therefore more support for tropical cyclone activity on the Atlantic side."
"What is this year showing? Well, the indications are like I said that we are not going to have an el nino and more likely we are going to have conditions which is one factor already supporting an above season. The other factor is whether the Atlantic basin is warmer than normal or cooler than normal and that factor is also favourable for tropical cyclone development, because this year, it appears that the Atlantic basin will be warmer than normal. The warmer the sea surface temperatures, the more fuel you have for tropical cyclone development. So, again, the 2 factors are supportive and what is the prediction? Most of the agencies that do tropical cyclone predictions are indicating that we are going to see above normal activities. What do we mean by normal or normal is the average amount of storms that occurred from 1991-2020, so for those 30 years we do an average and see how much was that average and that average is currently 14 name storms, 7 hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes. And for this year the prediction is for there to be about 14-21 name storms, of those, 6-10 are to become hurricanes and 3-6 major hurricanes."
And tomorrow, we'll have more from this press conference, including how you can be prepared in case of an emergency.
