2004: The year without dry season
With numerous heavy rains in March, April, and May 2004 will go down in history as “the year without a dry season”. Today News 5’s Patrick Jones visited the Meteorology Department to find out what’s going on with Belize’s weather.
Frank Tench, Forecaster
“The dry season has been more wet than normal because of the frequent intrusion of cold fronts during the months of March, April, and May this year. Some of the fronts did not cross the country, but they came pretty close and close enough to induce unstable conditions in our area.”
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The lack of what is usually three solid months of dry weather has caught more than a few people off guard. While the dry season traditionally stretches through the end of May, Forecaster Frank Tech says rainfall totals for the last two and a half months have been significantly above normal.
Frank Tench
“Just taking a look at this graph here it?s quite obvious that this station here, Melinda in the Stann Creek district recorded almost ten inches of rainfall, which is way above their normal of just over two inches for the month of March. And if you look at the graph for several of our other stations around the country, Consejo again, they recorded a total which was more than twice their normal. Tower Hill a little above normal, the International Airport was higher than normal. Only Belmopan and the Belize College of Agriculture in the Cayo District recorded values which were below their normal.”
Further south the situation is no different, where stations at Maya King; Big Falls, Toledo; and Punta Gorda have recorded unusually high rainfall.
Tench says that while the amount of rain that fell over Belize in April was about average, the first seventeen days of May have been a different story.
Frank Tench
“It became particularly apparent over the past weekend where many of our stations recorded some significantly higher rainfall values than expected for the month of May. If fact, over the weekend from Saturday, Sunday, to Monday, Punta Gorda recorded almost six inches of rainfall over that weekend. And this is a graph showing the totals we have so far for the month of May. And if you watch the colours here, this magenta, almost all our stations recorded values above normal, except for Big Falls in the Toledo district which has some catching up to do. But Punta Gorda has already broken the average for this month of May.”
Patrick Jones
“Statistical data analyzed by the Belize Weather Bureau indicates that the dry season this year has been anything but…Forecaster Frank Tench says while the rain may upset our routines, there are benefits to be had from this manifestation of nature gone loco.”
Frank Tench
“The wet season has started early, so the chances are that I might end earlier than normal and we probably go into maybe a mild winter season earlier than normal. Something that I am also thinking about is the fact that we have strong westerly already over the area, and westerly winds tend to sheer off the tops of the C.B. clouds associated with tropical storms and hurricanes. So that might be a blessing in terms of say the incidence of hurricanes in our area, but that is just my thoughts on it right now.”
Agro meteorologist Ramon Frutos says the unseasonable rains can be a plus and minus for farmers.
Ramon Frutos, Agro Meteorologist
“First of all, the plants they need the rain and it?s good. However, talking to a farmer this morning it seems that the crops are going crazy right now. The reason why is because too much rainfall in a certain period of the crop phase affects the crop developments. However, the rains that we have been having at the moment will affect land preparation for the main corn crop. And another aspect of the high rainfall, a negative aspect as such, would be the spreading of fertilizers.”
All of which, Frutos says, if not managed properly could affect crop yields later on.
Ramon Frutos
“If you have too much rain at the onset of the planting, then it will affect the germination and the growth of the plant. However, what farmers can do, what we would advise them to so is to wait and see if they get a break of a couple days or at least a week of dry to plant. But as was forecast, we expect the rain to continue. And rainfall for May, June, and July will be above normal this year.”
Frutos says that a climatological condition known as the neutral phase of the El Niño southern oscillation is partly to blame for the inundation of northern Central America.
And while Belizeans are learning to cope with early rains, forecasters are keeping an eye on a system in the south west Caribbean Sea that could be the year’s first tropical system by this time next week. Patrick Jones, for News 5.
Tench says that to find another time when the month of May was this wet, you would have to go as far back as the dry seasons of 1984 and 1985.
