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Met steps up monitoring capacity as hurricane season opens

HighlightsMet steps up monitoring capacity as hurricane season opens

Meteorologists are forecasting an average to below average hurricane season this year, but the National Meteorological Service of Belize is, nonetheless, stepping up its game, since it is all too aware that it takes only one hard cyclonic hit to wreak havoc.

Chief Meteorological Officer Dennis Gonguez told us that the Met Service has spent the past weeks leading up to the opening of the Atlantic Hurricane Season this Sunday retraining staff and building its weather surveillance capabilities.

One major development is that, “During the past off-season, the National Meteorological Service has continued in its quest to be ever more prepared for any eventuality. The Service has acquired a primary and a secondary satellite data receiving system to serve as backup systems in the event that its primary source of data stream, the internet, is lost due to a catastrophic event,” the Met Office said.

Those systems will read data off US-owned satellites.

Gonguez notes that “…proper planning and preparations are the keys to preserving life and property.”

Gonguez said that although the Met Office has never lost its internet capacity to monitor storms, they want to ensure that they build in enough redundancy, so that Belizeans can stay informed of the latest weather developments.

Belize is also trying to formalize an arrangement with the Cayman Islands Meteorological Service, so that in the event that the Belize Meteorological Service becomes nonfunctional amid a weather calamity, Cayman will be able to provide forecast products geared for Belize. In the event that both Belize and Cayman are hit, Belize would, then, rely on Jamaica for tailored weather forecasts.

The development came following the annual Hurricane Committee Meeting held during the first week of April, in Cancun.

Gonguez told our newspaper that Belize’s Doppler radar is working well, and the US Weather Service recently performed a one-week, in-house training to give them a refresher course on Doppler radar image interpretation.

The Met Service informs that before the peak of this season (September to October), it intends to install and run a regional forecast model known as the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model, which will be focused directly over Belize.

“This model will be able to resolve and forecast weather systems within 9- to 10-mile distances as opposed to the resolution of 18 to 20 miles presently received from the global models being used operationally,” the Met office furthermore said.

Gonguez told us that the Met Office has already begun to install automatic weather stations at various locations. Three have already been installed on Half Moon Caye (the easternmost point), Hunting Caye and Punta Gorda, and six more will be installed at San Pedro, Placencia, Dangriga, Kendal (near Sittee), Middlesex and Benque Viejo Del Carmen. The weather stations will provide measurements of rainfall, wind, temp, pressure and humidity in real time.

The Met Office is also upgrading its computer networks to improve its capacity to handle the new databases. It will also make the new data available at its online site, at www.hydromet.gov.bz.

“We, the staff of the National Meteorological Service, with preparations firmly in place, will once again be putting forward our utmost best to provide accurate and timely information on all systems that could impact on our nation,” the Met Service said.

It underscores that, “Seasonal outlooks do not tell where the tropical cyclones could make landfall or the number of hits any one particular location could experience. It is worthwhile to note that regardless of the activity predicted in the seasonal outlooks, it takes only one system to create a disaster. Such disasters can happen whether the season is very active or relatively quiet; therefore the same level of preparation is required for this 2014 season as would be done if the forecasts called for an active season.”

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