Barbadians seeking to ring in the New Year in fine style, under dry conditions, will be happy to hear that no major rainfall is expected for this weekend.
Deputy Director of the Barbados Meteorological Services, Sonia Nurse, told The Barbados Advocate yesterday, that whilst there may be a few night-time to early morning showers as is customary at this time of year, there will be nothing too significant showers wise, as the year closes and a new one opens this weekend.
“We are not seeing a whole lot happening over the weekend,” Nurse indicated.
“You may still get a few night-time showers, particularly on Old Year’s Night. You may see a few showers coming through, but I don’t think it should be anything too, too significant,” she stressed.
Nurse also gave an overview of weather patterns for the year, noting that whilst the year started out relatively dry, due to a number of heavy rainfall events later in the wet season, Barbados is now recording slightly above average rainfall levels as the year comes to a close.
“We started out relatively dry and that was a contribution from 2014-2015, because we had an extended period of drought, but then, as we got into what would be the wet season, we started to see a little change. I think it was with (Tropical Storm) Matthew when we had the excessive rainfall, then we had the next event there on November 29 and then we had another event on (December) 22. So right now our rainfall is looking closer to what we would normally expect, in terms of the long-term average,” Nurse revealed.
“Last year, we (were) well below normal, where we had around 31 inches or 729 millimetres, but so far for 2016, and we are almost at the end of the year, we are at 1 418 millimetres. Last year we had 789.5 millimetres, so we are almost twice as much as what we had last year,” Nurse added.
“It is just another day or two to go, so I don’t expect too much more to be added. You will probably just end close to what I mentioned, 1 418 millimetres for this year, which is above what the long-term average is as well, because we would normally have around 1 270 millimetres in an average year and we are at 1 418. So we are slightly above average. So it is not looking too bad,” Nurse commented. (RSM)
Section: