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CEBU CITY, Philippines — Start wearing light colored clothes.
Pagasa Mactan said that La Niña or the cooling phase of sea temperature, that led to intense storms in the country, has ended and the likelihood of experiencing El Niño (warm phase) is not remote during the middle part of the year.
Weather specialist Jhomer Eclarino told CDN Digital that most of their climate models predict that an ENSO neutral (neither La Niña nor El Niño) would be experienced between March and June.
A possible transition to El Niño or the “warm phase” is expected thereafter.
ENSO has three faces: ENSO La Niña, El Niño (signifying lack of enough rainfall amount), and ENSO neutral.
“One of the impacts of [the] La Niña is nakasinati ta ng near normal to mostly above normal rainfall conditions, which nag cause ng mga floodings and rain-induced landslides,” he told CDN Digital.
Eclarino said that ENSO La Niña results to an earlier onset of the Habagat while one implication of ENSO El Niño is a delayed onset of the Habagat.
Based on the Pagasa data, the climatological normal rainfall amount for March here in Cebu is 60.9 millimeters.
“Pag ENSO-neutral, ibig sabihin nyan is mare-reach natin itong 60.9 (mm) na amount of rainfall (for March). Ang La Niña was (with) more rainfall,” he added.
Pagasa declared the onset of La Niña in October 2021. It officially ends this March.
‘Summer’ in the Philippines
Meanwhile, Eclarino said there is a possibility that the northeast monsoon “Amihan” would already be terminated by next week. This would mark the official the start of the “summer” or the hot season in the Philippines.
“(There is a) possibility, next week maka-terminate na ta ng Northeast monsoon. Pag wala na ang Amihan, that will signify na start na ng tag-init sa Pilipinas,” he told CDN Digital.
An advisory, he said, will be issued by Pagasa to formally announce the start of summer.
Normally, summer in the country is between the from third week of March until second week or third week of May.
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