THIS?NOTION of a hurricane season we are being warned to get out of our heads. And by no more an authoritative voice than Jeremy Collymore, executive director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA).
Ironically, Mr Collymore was giving the advice on the eve of the official start of the 2011 hurricane season.
The “seasonality”, which the CDEMA head would have “out the window”, began in earnest, as others might have it, yesterday.
Mr Collymore told the Press we could all look forward to an above-average hurricane period, with nine of the 17 storms predicted developing into hurricanes, five of them becoming “major events”.
Said Mr Collymore: “There is a higher than usual probability of these weather events taking place in the Caribbean.”
These sentiments will make us marvel unduly. We all have come to recognize an uncomfortably different behaviour of nature.
Just last week we were pondering on the tornadoes that claimed scores of lives in Joplin, Missouri, United States – described as part of a disturbing pattern in a spring of violent weather up North.
From April through May there was a series of tornado outbreaks that killed more than 400 Americans.
On average, tornado deaths in the United States have gone from eight per one million people in 1925 to 0.11 per one million people today – largely attributable to early warning systems fed by advanced meteorology and the Doppler radar.
But there would be stupefying death tolls from tornadoes this year, which has raised such questions as government subsidies for storm shelters, possibly limited tornado evacuations, and the argument that tornado warning and response should be a national security issue.
The sheer power of the storm systems, which have been produced by unusual jet stream dips bringing strong cold fronts into the midwest and south of America, has been cited by weather experts as the main factor in the death toll.
In April there were a record-breaking 600 tornadoes ripping through the United States, many of them with the power to crush houses and shopping malls – none so devastating as back in 1974 and before that in 1930.
Right here in Barbados, for the early part of the year, we suffered unusual rains, bringing us severe flooding and serious impediment to sugar cane harvesting.
What this says, CDEMA’s Mr Collymore stresses, “is that the idea of seasonality is out of the window”.
Indeed, we have to review not only our capabilities and readiness for all times, but how we perceive the ravages of nature – seriously!
