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By Francis Earl A. Cueto
Reporter
After a long dry spell, expect
rain, lots of it, in the last quarter of the year, the country’s
chief weather expert said Wednesday.
Philippine Atmospheric,
Geophysical and Astronomical Service Administration Chief Nathaniel
Cruz said based on 50 years of study, the country would be in for an
exceptionally wet season from September to December.
Guesting at the Fernandina Forum
in San Juan, Cruz urged government officials, agencies, local
governments as well as farmers to brace for the heavy rains and
typhoons after August, when drought-like conditions in Luzon are
expected to end.
“We will experience two extreme
weather events,” Cruz said. “We need to tell the public, all
officials, local government units that before the end of the year,
there will be a reversal of weather,” he said.
Since January, only two storms
have entered the Philippines. If there are no more storms after
August, Pagasa would declare a drought, Cruz said.
“Right now, there’s a storm
in the open sea but it will not enter the Philippines. It will go to
Japan,” he said.
The last time the Philippines
suffered a drought was in 1997-1998, when almost 90 percent of the
country received little rain.
Officials at the Angat Dam in
Bulacan, the main water source for Metro Manila residents, said they
need at least a week of heavy rains or at least three storms for the
water to return to normal levels.
Cruz said the Philippines is not
the only one experiencing “weird weather.” Abnormal conditions
are also prevailing in China, Japan and the rest of Southeast Asia,
he said.
The official refused to attribute
the unusual weather to climate change. “We are not saying that
this is climate change nor are we saying that this is not climate
change. We need more data, we need more information,” Cruz said.
Authorities have resorted to
cloud-seeding to induce rain over reservoirs and watersheds.
But in Kalinga, Abra, Ifugao and
Apayao, farmers are being encouraged to plant drought-resistance
crops because cloud-seeding is in the long run too costly.
Department of Agriculture
director Cesar Rodriguez said 50 hours of seeding would cost almost
P1.7 million.
Rodriguez acknowledged that some
provinces in the Cordilleras were benefiting from cloud-seeding.
At least eight planes are used in
cloud-seeding operations in Ilocos, Cagayan Valley and Central
Luzon, he said.
Some dams in Northern Luzon have
reached critical levels, triggering outages. The San Roque Dam in
the boundary of Itogon, Benguet and Sta. Maria, Pangasinan, which is
the second largest dam in Asia, reportedly shut down because of low
water supply.
Malacañang has ordered the
release of close to P700 million to cover the huge losses of farmers
in the Ilocos region, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon, Calabarzon and
the Bicol region, which were greatly hit by the dry spell, reports
said.
--With Harley Palangchao
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