National Met Service Predicts Increased Moisture Tonight Amid Prolonged Dry Season

The National Met Service is calling for an increase in moisture tonight.  It is a forecast that began earlier this week, and that many have been eagerly awaiting.  As the dry season continues to drag out, and as the heat and fires continue, portions of the Cayo District did experience a brief shower around midday today.  The rain is coming, but unfortunately, the Chief MET Officer, Ronald Gordon, says the rainfall is not as much as they had initially predicted.  

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist: “In terms of the rainfalls we are seeing an increase in moisture coming in this weekend. Actually today we’re expecting thunderstorms to develop over the Maya mountains and that should be some relief in that area. It won’t be the entire country at first. And then for tonight we’re expecting some rains over the south and that will eventually move up towards the coast and the rest of the country into tomorrow morning. And then we see a similar pattern repeating throughout the weekend. So the rains are coming gradually.”

Reporter: Would we expect to get any, and I’m not sure if you’re able to say, in the Challio area ? 

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist: “Yes. I do believe we’ll get rainfall in that area. The models are indicating that the south and west of the country including that areas hould be getting some rainfall during the next few days so we will get some rainfall in that area. Now the quantities are a bit more trickier to say. Initially it was looking like two to four inches daily but the forecast has been diminishing and that’s not good news. We’re looking at one to two inches now on a daily basis so we’re very concerned about that because initially we were quite relieved that we were seeing that quantity of rainfall coming in.”

One surprising fact that Chief Gordon noted as a panellist in this morning’s Disaster Risk Management press conference, is that the smoke plays a role in just how much rains we can expect.

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist: “I have been reading up on the effects of smoke, the excess smoke and in terms of rainfall development and it can have an effect. The models factor in all these things and that’s a human variable that you cannot factor rain. So we don’t know how much the smoke is going to be affecting the development of rain drops and that type of thing. So just to say we are damaging our environment with that excessive amount of burning.”