El Niño in Visayas amid typhoons

It’s typhoon season, but the weather bureau said the Visayas and Mindanao should prepare for El Niño and a drought, which is already being felt in dried up farmlands in Bohol province.

Southern Cebu is also being monitored due to below normal rainfall levels.

Typhoon Igme, which made landfall in Taiwan yesterday may head back to the Philippines, said Oscar Tabada, chief of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Service Administration (Pagasa) in Mactan.

Igme is making a counter-clockwise loop in the next 24 to 48 hours as it interacts with Typhoon on Julian which is 1,000 kilometers east of Basco, Batanes.

The merging of both typhoons will bring more rains in Luzon, said Tabada.

However, the weather is different in Central Visayas, which has light to moderate rains in the afternoon and evening.

He said the region will have fine weather until Tuesday next week.

Tabada said the Visayas and Mindanao should prepare for the El Niño phenomenon, which was earlier detected in the first week of August.

“Based on international indicators there is already an increase in temperature above the normal in the Western Pacific Ocean. We expected this to occur in the last quarter of the year from October to May next year,” Tabada said.

“But we already feel it (El Nino phenomenon) in the Visayas, especially Bohol, where some farmlands there have already cracked due to absence of rain. Some water wells have even started to dry up,” Tabada said.

El Niño’s impact in Cebu is still weak, “because we are still experiencing rain, but by October, weather could be hotter.”

FUIJWARA EFFECT

The interaction between two storms is called the Fujiwara Effect, a phenomenon described by the US National Weather Service as the tendency of two nearby storms to move around a common pivot.

“It’s making a U-turn,” said Pagasa forecaster Aldczar Aurelio of Igme but added that it was not likely that Igme (international name: Tembin) and Julian (Bolaven) would merge because both are strong typhoons.

“They will only merge if one of them weakens into a tropical storm, a tropical depression or a low pressure area,” he told the Inquirer by phone.

The likely scenario so far, he said, was that Igme would return to the country, while Julian would move toward Japan.

Pagasa predicted that Igme would leave the Philippines on Tuesday, while Julian would exit a day earlier, on Monday.

As of yesterday, public Storm Signal No. 2 was still hoisted over the Batanes group of islands, while Signal No. 1 was raised in the Calayan and Babuyan groups of islands.

An indication that the Fujiwhara effect was already starting was that Igme was moving west-southwest at a slow pace of 7 kph, Aurelio said.

On the other hand, Julian maintained its strength as it moved northwestward at a faster pace of 13 kph.

Both storms are expected to enhance the southwest monsoon that will bring rains over the northern and western sections of the country./with Inquirer report