REALLY, I’m not complaining. I like cool weather. And I consider the spate of April showers in summer God’s blessings.
We might experience something weird this coming Semana Santa: a wet Maundy Thursday and a Good Friday. Glory alleluia!
I checked the website AccuWeather. The weather forecast for Bacolod says “a thunderstorm in spots,” and “partly sunny with a shower” on Maundy Thursday. For April 14, Good Friday, the City of Smiles will experience “a thunderstorm in the area.”
The website PanahonTV says “Northeast Monsoon affecting Northern and Central Luzon. Tail-end of a cold front affecting the eastern section of Visayas and of Mindanao. Cloudy skies with light to moderate rains and isolated thunderstorms will be experienced over Visayas.”
Let’s see. With the advances in meteorological science, the saying “unpredictable as the weather” might soon become passé.
Frankly, I’m not surprised with this freak weather. After all, the new normal in this age of climate change are abnormal weathers.
A new study published in the journal Nature Climate Changes shows the link between increased precipitation and climate change. Clouds can hold more water in warm temperatures allowing for larger downpours. In fact, the increase in precipitation due to global warming has already begun, scientists say.
In the United States, climate change could drive a 400 percent increase in the number of extreme summer downpours in some parts of the United States by 2100, exacerbating flash flooding events that have wreaked havoc in communities across the country in recent years.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and globally water vapor increases, notes the UK’s Guardian, by 7 percent for every degree centigrade of warming.
What will the morrow bring? It is likely that in a warmer climate heavy rainfall in the Philippines will increase and be produced by fewer more intense events. This could lead to longer dry spells and a higher risk of floods and megastorms.
For now at least, these April showers offer warm relief from the summer heat. I shudder to think, however, what the rest of the year will bode for us.
I pray that of St. Francis of Assisi, “Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water, who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.”
(bqsanc@yahoo.com)