Summer starts this week but don’t call it that

MANILA, Philippines—Enjoy warm, sunny days ahead, as the weather bureau is poised to declare the official start of summer “most likely this week.”

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) is expecting the end of the northeast monsoon (hanging amihan), signaling the beginning of the dry season.

The state agency does not actually use “summer” in its nomenclature, opting to use dry and wet to refer to the Philippines’ only two seasons. “Summer is used in midlatitude countries that have four seasons, like the United States,” forecaster Glaiza Escullar said.

The dry season typically begins when the northeast monsoon, which ushers in freezing winds from Siberia, gradually weakens, replaced by warm and moist easterly winds from the Pacific Ocean.

Air temperatures will be warm over most parts of Luzon, Eastern Visayas and Mindanao in the coming days, according to Pagasa’s weekly outlook.

The low pressure area (LPA), which developed into a tropical depression named “Caloy” and later weakened again into an LPA, left the country’s area of responsibility at about noon on Tuesday, Escullar said.

Now cloud cluster

“The LPA is now just a cloud cluster,” she said.

Tropical cyclones hitting the country in March are not unusual. In December, Pagasa’s Climate Monitoring and Prediction Center predicted “zero or one tropical cyclone” hitting the country in January, March and April, with only a slim chance of it hitting in February, a historically storm-free month.

Moderate to strong northeasterly to easterly surface winds will continue to prevail over Luzon, but this will gradually fade, the forecaster said.

Based on Pagasa’s 24-hour outlook, Eastern Visayas, Cagayan Valley, Bicol, and Aurora and Quezon provinces will experience cloudy skies with light to moderate rain showers and isolated thunderstorms.

Metro Manila and the rest of the country will be partly cloudy to cloudy with isolated rain showers or thunderstorms, it added.

Escullar said Pagasa would declare the termination of the northeast monsoon once certain conditions had been met, such as when a high pressure system in the northern Pacific Ocean becomes more pronounced.

“We expect this transition (to the dry season) will happen this week,” she said.

Originally posted: 3:19 pm | Tuesday, March 25th, 2014
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