2-day rain signals end of El Niño

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

RAINS finally fell in the city and province of Iloilo since Tuesday much to the relief Ilonggos who have been reeling from the dry spell since the El Niño phenomenon which started late last year.

The rain began pouring past 5pm the other day as forecast by the weather bureau Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAG-ASA).

On Monday morning the downpour inundated drainage-less roads in downtown Iloilo City.

PAG-ASA Iloilo chief Rafael Tapales said the rains may have been brought about by a prevailing cold front and inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ).

The ITCZ appears as a band of clouds, usually thunderstorms, which circles the globe near the equator. It drastically affects rainfall in many equatorial nations, resulting in the wet and dry seasons of the tropics where the Philippines is situated.

“Based on the cloud formation, the celestial dome was covered which probably indicated that wide areas in the Panay island have experienced the rain showers,” Tapales said.

Tapales said the El Niño phenomenon has slowly dissolved this month but the southwest monsoon, which ushers in the rainy season, is not yet fully developed to change the weather.

PAG-ASA will be able to declare the start of the rainy season if accumulated rainfall is registered at 25 millimeters within five days, he added.

The weather bureau has predicted mostly cloudy weather with scattered rain showers and thunderstorms in the cities of Iloilo and Bacolod from May 27-30. Temperatures in these cities will range from 25 to 25 degrees centigrade.

Larry P. Nacionales, regional director of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in Western Visayas, said the rains in the past two days were natural, not induced.

The DA has been conducting cloud seeding operations in the mountains of Iloilo to induce rain to ease the dry spell.

Cloud seeding was also seen to increase water supply at the watershed area from where the Metro Iloilo Water District (MIWD) largely sources its water.

The onset of rains is also seen to help recover losses in rice production in the onslaught of El Niño.

DA-Western Visayas said 125,000 metric tons of rice in 22,000 hectares of rice land was lost to the dry spell. The damages amounted to P1.2 billion in the region alone.

Nacionales said they are readying 118,000 sacks of certified rice seeds to be distributed to farmers.