_{Photo: Shanea Young, Senior Climatologist, National Meteorological Service}

by Charles Gladden

BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Oct. 31, 2024

For the past couple of weeks, Belize has been experiencing extremely wet conditions and many are hopeful that it will soon end.

These rainy conditions have been prevalent in inland areas of the country, but earlier this week heavy showers were pouring in Belize City, with a slight break occurring on Tuesday and Wednesday; however, the showers have resumed.

Shanea Young, Senior Climatologist at the National Meteorological Service, told the press in a Zoom interview that these types of showers are the norm in late October and early November, with another wave of showers expected to hit within a few hours.

“We have what we call the Central American Gyre. It’s a broad area of low pressure that covers central and southern parts of Central America. So that normally forms every year around this time, and it also interacts with the monsoon trough that normally hangs out around the Panama area; and sometimes that trough moves up closer to our area and forms a big broad area of low pressure, which has been supporting, as I said, the moist and unstable conditions, in addition to the regular tropical waves that we have that cross the country during [this] time,” she said.

“Almost every year around the end of October or early November, we get a lot of rain. Whether they are turning into a tropical system like Eta and Iota, or they be continuous rains like now because of low-pressure air and systems around the area … they don’t necessarily have to become a tropical depression or a tropical storm. For us, the weaker systems of tropical waves and even sometimes depressions would give us more continuous rains as we have seen over the last few days,” Young mentioned.

Many Belizeans sing hooray at the end of October (Category 5 Hurricane Hattie struck on October 31, 1961), believing that it is the end of the hurricane season, as our peak is between September and October, as Young explained.

“Our peak for Belize especially is normally between September and October. So that’s why most of our storms or tropical cyclones tend to affect us during that period. But that’s not to say that you can’t get storms forming outside of the period and even outside of the hurricane season, because we have had storms forming later or in other parts of the year. So, for us, at least in the next seven days, even though there is this broad area of low pressure currently, there’s nothing that has developed in the area; and then also, at least the models are indicating at this time that even if something does form, it’s not going to come towards us,” she said.

She noted that rainfall is expected to be between two to four inches for the upcoming days.