Flood Alert Issued for Southern Belize as Heavy Rains Forecasted

With the forecast for torrential rains for tonight and tomorrow, the Hydrology Unit has issued a flood alert for some areas.  Tennille Hendy, the Principal Hydrologist, told the media that an advisory has been issued for residents in the south to monitor water levels.  As it relates to flash flooding, Hendy says they have observed water channeling down to the area of Maskall Village and surrounding communities.  

Tennille Williams Hedy, Principal Hydrologist: “For the 24-hour outlook we’re looking at the Rio Hondo, the Belize, Mopan, Macal rivers, all the rivers coming off the eastern slopes of the Maya Mountains. We see those having elevated levels going into tomorrow morning but we’re just saying to monitor them not to be frantic about it just to monitor the water levels as we’re showing elevated levels in those areas. There are areas that you need to be specifically a little bit more vigilant. It’s a bit further away from what we call the urban areas. So it would affect the rural areas in the Toledo district, in the Stann Creek district. So we’re looking at rivers, the Rio Grande, we’re looking at Temash, we’re looking at Moho, most of them that stem off the eastern slopes of the Maya mountains. So all those rivers running into the Stann Creek and Toledo district primarily those are the more flash flood prone rivers. However, it’s not just limited to those areas. We also have in the Cayo district where we’re looking at some portions of the Roaring River that borders Belmopan, the ATM caves. These systems emanate directly from the Maya mountains. So we’re looking at all that Rio On area they have on our system shown elevated levels but they’re not meeting the thresholds for an actual flash flood to occur with the data that we have now. As Chief Met has always said, we can give you a forecast now and in two minutes it changes because the data keeps updating itself. So usually in these times we would try, if we see the situation changing too much for us departing from the earlier forecast we would issue a forecast later in the day.”

Up to mid-afternoon today, Hendy noted that the Macal and Mopan Rivers are already at bank-full stage and are expected to raise to flood levels with the incoming rains.