A leading Caribbean weather forecaster is reminding Vincentians that it doesn’t take a hurricane for their country to experience loss of life and significant damage during the Hurricane Season.
“A slow-moving system can bring enormous amounts of rainfall and you know that when the rain falls heavily you are going to get also flooding, you might get landslides and sometimes even the loss of lives, just as has happened several times unfortunately in the recent few years,” Cédric Van Meerbeeck, climatologist at the Barbados-based Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology told iWitness News on Wednesday.
Van Meerbeeck said that residents of SVG need to keep updated, adding that there are some extreme wet spells that add to the risk of having landslides and flashfloods.
“So this is a possibility for the wet season and, therefore, the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines must remain very vigilant for that. Always listen as much as possible to the weather forecasters,” he said.
Van Meerbeeck said forecasters might often say that there is nothing to worry about, saying that it would be partly cloudy with a chance of scattered showers.
“But what they mean to say is that right now you don’t need to worry about flooding. However, it is at times when the message becomes different that you need to pay attention.”
He noted that while forecasters are not yet certain, Caribbean residents should not be complacent.
Van Meerbeeck said that flooding is a possibility, adding that citizens need to keep vigilante, right up to the end of the year.
“In any case, we need to be vigilant because we know there needs to be only one [weather system] and that can wreak serious havoc,” Van Meerbeeck told iWitness News.