The rain fell in the morning like what the weather bureau predicted it would, and the sun had still to come out yesterday. Typhoon Tino has entered the Philippine area of responsibility, crossing the Visayas before it is expected to exit via the West Philippine Sea. I expect the weather to improve only after that.
With my age, I have been through lots of typhoons. There was one time in the mountains when the rain caught us in the hut that we built on the bank of a creek that went down to one of the Mananga River tributaries. The water swelled and ate the bank, putting the hut in danger of being pulled down. We, “petiburgis” all, initially merely watched as a peasant organizer worked hard to prevent the hut’s post from being pulled down by the water. It took us a while to lend our hands to help. If I remember right, that was also the time when the Mananga bridge in Tabunok, Talisay fell.
The danger when the rain falls continuously on the slope is that the area becomes landslide-prone. That’s when mountain roads become dangerous. If one is observant, one can predict where the landslide would hit because the water creates cracks that go deep into the slope. In Cebu, the combination of soil quality and lack of forest cover have made the mountain slopes dangerous during heavy and prolonged rain.
I was initially upbeat the other day because the sun came out. I do not actually rely much on this weather-predicting business because meteorologists sometimes predict the weather signals wrong. I trust my instinct more and use the data provided by the weather bureau merely to support my theories. Of course, I am guarded in that trust.
Which brings me to the advances in technology and how these have made the weather-prediction business both easy and hard. Social media has given people freedom to post their predictions on the weather on various platforms, but this freedom tends to be anarchic. Fake information often proliferates and one needs to be conscious of how to use the information that the current technology so easily spreads. Especially now that artificial intelligence has taken over the internet. Tracking down fake information has become doubly difficult.
Then there’s this problem of the easy availability of the technology to spread misinformation. That is why I am also an advocate of fact checking and of increasing the number of people engaged in it. It does look to me like fact checkers are now being overwhelmed by fake news creators so their number needs to increase. Again, I rely on my former comrades-in-arm on this one. Journalists and former journalists should take the lead because they are the ones well-equipped to ensure that only the true narrative is spread online.
Perhaps we can start by straightening out the reporting on the weather. On this, journalists can help the meteorologists in spreading only the correct information on weather disturbances. Journalists and former journalists should reach out to or help experts in spreading correct information on weather disturbances online.