Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - Summer is supposed to be the dry season in the Philippines. Not this year.
It's going to be a wet summer that will have typhoons due to the La Ni?a phenomenon that has been spawning rains in the Philippines since December, the weather bureau said.
The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said large parts of the country would get above-normal rainfall in the summer months of March, April and May.
Tropical cyclones
"This means that we expect to have a rainy summer. We expect to have tropical cyclones," Flaviana Hilario, chief of PAGASA's climatology and agrometeorology division.
She said weather models and advisories from various national meteorological centers forecast La Ni?a to last until May, with the peak occurring in February.
The months from March to May are considered the height of summer in the country, when millions troop to the beaches. These months are usually the driest months, with typhoons making an appearance only in mid-May.
Typhoons in March-May
Citing meteorological models, Hilario said there was a "slim chance" that a typhoon would enter the Philippine area of responsibility next month.
PAGASA expects one typhoon in March, two in April and another two in May. June, the start of the rainy season, is expected to have two to three typhoons, Hilario said.
La Ni?a arrived in the Philippines last October. The phenomenon, the opposite of El Ni?o, occurs when the surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean gets colder. El Ni?o refers to the increase in the surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean.
The Philippines will be under heavy cloud and will experience cooler temperatures in the next five days as a result of the combined effects of the tail end of the cold front and the northeast monsoon.
Five-day forecast
Robert Sawi, a PAGASA weather forecaster, said that "for the next five days, most parts of the country will be affected by the northeast monsoon." He said north and central Luzon would have rains on Thursday.
The skies will gradually improve on Friday, but the weekend will bring rains again, he said.
By Sunday, Sawi forecast that the cold front would prevail in Luzon, while the wind convergence zone will hover over Mindanao.
In the Western Pacific, La Ni?a results in stronger storms and heavier rains. This is evident in parts of Australia, specifically Queensland, where continuous rains have inundated coastal towns and cities.
The last time the Philippines experienced a severe La Ni?a was in 1998, after a harsh El Ni?o year.
Above-normal rainfall
The Philippines received "above-normal" rainfall in the summer months of 1998, Hilario said, noting that this scenario is expected to be repeated in 2011.
"In the 1998 La Ni?a, almost the whole country received above-normal rainfall. We had a rainy summer then," Hilario noted.
She said the country suffered El Ni?o from 2009 to April 2010.
Graciano Yumul Jr., PAGASA officer in charge, advised local governments and residents in high-risk areas such as eastern Philippines to be prepared for fierce typhoons and landslides this year.
Global warming
He said the atmosphere was packing more moisture, which eventually falls as rain or snow, because of global warming.
"The occurrence of an Ondoy-like flood is a possibility. A landslide such as in Guinsaugon is a distinct possibility," he added.
In Sept. 2009, Tropical Storm "Ondoy" (international name: Ketsana) dumped record rains in Metro Manila, flooding about 80 percent of the metropolis in a day. In February 2006, a landslide buried the village of Guinsaugon in St. Bernard town, Southern Leyte province, after 10 days of nonstop rains.
Since December, the Philippines, particularly the eastern seaboard, has been getting an extraordinary amount of rains.
PAGASA also noted that more provinces were experiencing large amounts of rainfall this year compared with 1998.
Forecast maps showed that even western parts of the Philippines, which should be dry this year, were receiving above-normal rainfall.
Catarman town in Northern Samar province received the biggest volume of rainfall from Jan. 1 to Jan. 17, at 1,214.3 mm. (The normal rainfall in the town is 444.2 mm.)
This was followed by Borongan town in Samar province, which got 1,214.3 mm of rainfall during the first 17 days of January, significantly higher than the previous January figure of 597.5 mm, according to PAGASA.
In Puerto Princesa City in Palawan province for instance, the PAGASA station posted a rainfall of 148.6 mm, way above the city's normal level of 29.5 mm.
Western Visayas has also reported nonstop rains in the past week, PAGASA officials said. In the past, the region received minimal rainfall during this month.
