Cold front brings high winds, low tides
It may have been sunny and bright today but that didn’t stop people from hauling out their flannels. Northers are not common this time of year but what made this norther special was that it was blowing from the southwest. Patrick Jones explains.
If the answers to life’s questions were, quote-unquote, blowing in the wind today, they are probably long down the road by now. The strong gusty winds that most people awoke to this morning, says Chief Meteorologist Carlos Fuller, are the result of a cold front which crossed over Belize last night. Fuller says that while its a bit out of the ordinary for a front to behave in this manner, there is no cause for concern right now.
Carlos Fuller, Chief Meteorologist
“This front was unusual because it developed in the Gulf of Mexico, so it did not have the very cold air normally associated with cold fronts. However, because the pressures were so low, it generated very strong winds over Belize, started late yesterday evening and running through today. So that was the unusual feature about this cold front.”
The front is now well beyond Belize, moving in a north-easterly direction. Fuller says it is the back-draft that is now keeping temperatures on the cool side. This peculiar occurrence, which is seasonal, can be blamed on a familiar culprit.
Carlos Fuller
“These fronts are normally associated those times of the year when you have an El Nino. And because this year is an El Nino we had one of these phenomenon occurring and so it is an unusual event in that it occurs maybe once every five or six years, you’d get this type of cold front. And its quite possible that we could still get another couple like this forming in the Gulf producing this kind of windy conditions.”
For small crafts venturing out to sea, the Weather Bureau is advising operators to expect rough conditions. But the surprise effects of the confused cold front didn’t just catch people off guard. The combined effect of wind and tide left the Haulover Creek at rock bottom. Water birds that would normally be swimming found themselves walking. And sinus suffers must have had a nightmare with all that dust that was flying around.
Carlos Fuller
“The wind has been averaging between 15 and 25 knots through the period however we’ve had some very high gusts and our station at Half Moon Caye recorded a gust of 44 knots so indeed the wind has been very strong sporadically … yesterday it was rather warm across most of the county because there was not much wind blowing. What wind there was coming from the south and southwest that was off the land, Guatemala, Honduras, etc. So that it was very warm yesterday and the temperature rose to 94.2 degrees Fahrenheit at the airport and that equals the temperature that was set back in 1963 making it the hottest two days on record for the month of February at the airport.”
Fuller says a shift back to warmer weather is expected to begin late Wednesday evening; but it won’t be for very long. There is another cold front hot on the heels of the one that has just passed, and this time, we could be in for some rain.
Carlos Fuller
“At this moment this system is very violent, producing a lot of heavy surf erosion along California coastline, heavy snow over parts of northern California. However it will loose a lot of its energy as it crosses Mexico and those high mountains, so it will not be as violent, not as cold, but we could get some rainfall as it crosses the country Saturday or Sunday.”
Tonight is expected to be a little cooler than Monday with the mercury dipping to about 65 degrees Fahrenheit at the airport and a few degrees lower inland. Patrick Jones, for News Five.
