‘Dante’ moves away but more storms coming up

AMID strong winds and heavy rain, Tropical Storm “Dante” hasn’t made landfall in the country.

In fact, the Mactan office of the state weather bureau Pagasa said “Dante” will move away from the country at 9 p.m today.

But acting Pagasa-Mactan chief Oscar Tabada warned that two or three more storms are expected to hit the country this month.

“We already declared this week as the start of the rainy season with the presence of ‘Dante,” he said.

Tabada said five out of eight weather stations in the country recorded more than 25 mm of rainfall in the past five days.

As of 4 p.m. yesterday, the center of tropical storm Dante was estimated 900 km east of Basco, Batanes with maximum sustained winds of 75 kilometer per hour.

While “Dante” didn’t make landfall in the country, Tabada said its presence was felt in the western part of the Visayas and Mindanao.

He said they recorded 11.5 mm of rainfall at 2 to 3 p.m yesterday.

Power failure

Last Saturday’s heavy rains and strong winds caused brownouts in some parts of Metro Cebu as power lines got entangled by kites at 3 p.m.

Brownouts occurred in barangays Lagtang, Biason, Tabunok, Linao and Dumlog in Talisay City as well as Basak, San Nicolas, Lahug, Guadalupe, F. Ramos, Mabolo and V. Rama in Cebu City.

In a phone interview, Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) corporate communications manager Theresa Sederiosa said they sent their crew to remove the kites and branches or leaves from the power lines.

An explosion also happened in front of Shopwise department store, which a Veco emergency crew was still investigating.

“The rain and strong winds could sometimes affect our lines. That’s why we have been aggressively campaigning for people to really avoid flying kites in areas where there are electricity lines,” Sederiosa said.

Sederiosa said power consumption usually lowers in June because it’s colder and people don’t use their air-conditioning units that much.

Based on data from the National Grid Power Corp. the Visayas grid had a 463 MW reserve yesterday with total peak demand only at 1,291 MW versus the capacity of 1,753 MW. /Christine Emily L. Pantaleon, Correspondent with Reporter Aileen Garcia-Yap