Met Services: ‘Better safe than sorry’

The Barbados Meteorological Services chose to be safe rather than sorry when it issued a flood watch for the island.

That warning led Government to close its schools and nurseries for the day.

However, the expected inclement weather did not materialize and there were clear skies for the majority of the day causing some persons to question the reliability of the Met Office.

A flood watch was issued at 6:25 a.m. and again at midday.

The Met Office discontinued the flood watch at 2:07 p.m.

In that release, the Met Office said, “The Barbados Meteorological Services (BMS) has discontinued the flood watch for Barbados effective immediately. Shower activity has continued to diminish to the east of Barbados over the past few hours. In addition, updated numerical guidance supported by observations from BMS and radar data supports the discontinuation.

Some moderate showers are still possible as the afternoon progresses, but rainfall accumulations have now been revised downward to a maximum of 25mm.

This is the final message from the BMS on this event.”

In defending the Met Office’s decision, meteorologist 2 David Harding told Barbados TODAY the technology used is not 100 per cent accurate.

He said the models used by the Met Office showed there was the possibility that as much as 400 millimeters of rain could be dumped on Barbados.

“With models they tell you what might occur or might not occur. The models are not gospel. When I left in the morning the models were showing a great amount of rainfall occurring over Barbados. Tuesday morning the models were showing that at least two inches of rainfall would have occurred over Barbados,” Harding explained.

“Models can change every couple hours. They can improve, they can deteriorate, they can vanish, and up until when he [Acting Director Sabu Best] sent out that update yesterday some people said they were seeing 400 millimeters of rainfall over Barbados.

“At that time you have to decide if the models are correct or incorrect, so he went for the six inches of rainfall. You have to protect yourself and you have to go in for the most severe weather because if it was the opposite way with the clouds coming over and you are expecting these sort of low level clouds that will build and produce thunder and lightning and rain and you don’t issue the warning what is going to happen? We would get lambaste so we went for the most serious activity,” Harding pointed out.
(RB)