The weather bureau is expecting the rainy season to start in the middle of the month. | CDN Digital file photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Get your rain gears ready as the rainy season may start this week.
The state weather bureau forecasted that the official start of the rainy season may fall anytime before June 15, Saturday.
Romeo Aguirre, a weather specialist of the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) in Mactan, said westerlies, said weather trends showed a high possibility that the westerlies which would indicate the start of the rainy season would come in the second week of June.
To consider that the rainy season had started, Aguirre said they would have to log a total of 25 millimeters (mm) of rainfall in five successive days.
Read more: Pagasa: Rainy season may start mid of June but effects of El Niño could last until August
“For the month of June, we expect a “near-normal” level of rainfall. So there will be 80 to 120 percent of the normal level [of rainfall] which is at 190.4 mm,” Aguirre said.
At present, Aguirre said the cloudy skies and isolated rainshowers experienced on Sunday and the past days were brought by the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) which had been prevailing over the Visayas.
“So far, ang nagpadag-om karon is the ITCZ nga nagprevial sa Visayas. Pero ugma, we expect nga mobalik ni sa Mindanao area. It will still have an effect pero mostly sa Mindanao,” Aguirre said.
Aguirre said the temperature next week, June 10 to 14, would range from 26 to 34 degrees Celsius.
It will have a maximum heat index of 42 degrees Celsius.
Last week, Pagasa recorded the highest temperature at 35 degrees Celsius and heat index of 44 degrees Celsius at 1 p.m. on June 3.
Meanwhile, despite the possible entry of the rainy season, the 70 percent chance that the effect of the weak El Niño will end in August still stands./dbs