Belizeans woke up this morning to a tropical storm with a predicted trajectory heading straight for the jewel. Though it's still a week away, many felt the familiar fright after recently enduring Lisa. But while it was initially forecasted to become a hurricane, TS Bret is no longer a threat. This afternoon, Chief Meteorologist, Ronald Gordon, told us that the most that can be expected - if everything goes as predicted - is a few showers for Belize.
Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist, National MET Service
"Tropical storm Bret is a 45 mile per hour tropical storm approaching the windward islands, actually about 835 miles away at the moment. It's moving to the west basically i think the last advisory I saw moving 18 miles per hour towards the west. The system is not expected to become a hurricane anymore and is expected to affect the lesser Antilles sometime on Thursday, after that it will move into the Eastern Caribbean Sea where it will encounter very hostile environments and is expected to dissipate into waves before it comes into our area so based on this current forecast, the system does not pose a threat to Belize."
"The system will likely produce some rains sometime in the early part of next week and that's about it, if it dissipates as it is expected to. Of course these things can change so the advice is for Belizeans to keep monitoring the latest updates from us and we will inform is there is a threat to the country but currently there is no threat to the country and based on the current forecast, it is not expected to be a threat to the country."
"We did mention that there are two counteracting forces this season, so one is the very warm ocean waters in the Atlantic and the other is the El Niño effect so this storm basically fed off the first factor which is the very warm ocean waters and that is what supported the development of this system however we still do anticipate that the environmental conditions in the atmosphere will be a bit more hostile in the season due to the El Niño and that will likely result in a normal season, a normal season is about 14 named storms, so having two develop in June is not unusual and does not indicate that it will be an above normal season."
So, to be clear, there is now a greater than 95% chance this does NOT reach hurricane intensity. But, we'll keep watching.
