Massy Realty - Outside Back Cover BARBADOS www.barbadospropertynews.com • August - September 2022 • Issue 140 PROPERTY NEWS FREE &ONLINE Island Gold Realty - Page 11 Realtors - Page 1 Endorsed by the Barbados Estate Agents and Valuers Association Inc. Royal Westmoreland - Page 5
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Glorious Crop Over took place with an alternative route along part of the highway and it was good to see the island coming back to life and this vital Festival being enjoyed by many. It’s the highlight of the summer and over the past two years, Bajans and visitors alike have missed the music, parties and fun. Here’s hoping it will continue to grow and prosper beyond levels seen before.
the storm warnings and stay safe.
Please, don’t wait until the alarm sounds. Get your supplies in, tidy up your property and BE PREPARED!
Editor’s Comments
After speaking to many agents, I understand that the real estate market was buzzing over the past winter season. One agent to said to me “it’s the best season we have ever had”. Coming out of covid people were keen to travel and to make life changing decisions. We hope you come to this beautiful island and find your dream home. Take a look inside as there is lots on offer and don’t forget, we’re on line on
If you would like to advertise in Barbados Property News call Pam at 228-9122 or 232-0692 PublisherCredits– Hiltop Publications Ltd, 11 Cottage Ridge, St George, Barbados, BB19071 Tel (246) 228-9122, Fax (246) 228-0243 Email: www.caribbeanmortgageservices.comwww.caribbeanpropertymag.comwww.barbadospropertynews.comwww.sportingbarbados.comsportingb@caribsurf.com Editor/Advertising – Pamela L Hiles Design and Art Direction – 809 Distribution – Hiltop Publications Ltd, Brian’s Print Brokerage Printing Coles Printery The Material and editorial contained in this publication have been deemed accurate at the time of going to print. The views expressed as editorial are those of the Editor unless stated otherwise. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of the permission of Hiltop Publications Ltd. On the Cover: Royal Westmoreland
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It’s official – the hurricane season is here and we have to be prepared. I hope you enjoy the wonderful article by David Brooks which looks back at storms in history and details what’s going on with weather systems in our area now. Thank you David for another excellent article. Check out his website http://www.brohavwx.com.
Pamela Hiles, Editor
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• 1675, August 31: Strong hurricane. Island devastated
"I would rate the winds at 200 miles per hour. It left damage at more than £2 million (back then) and about 1,525 dead, though the figure could have been as high as 2,500. I would rate this similar in strength to Hugo when it was approaching the Eastern Caribbean," he told the NATION in an interview some years ago. So, that would put it in the Category 5 based on Saffir-Simpson scale – see Figure 1. That was 191 years ago, so yes, they did happen that bad back Figurethen.1.
FEATURE
• 1660, December: Hurricane. Vessels ran aground.
The 1831 hurricane struck at 5 p.m. and battered Barbados for 12 hours … according to a quote from retired meteorologist and former director of the Barbados Meteorological Service (BMS), Deighton Best, who said the hurricane which struck on August 10, 1831 was perhaps the most powerful ever to hit Barbados.
FigureMany2 of the other hurricanes would have been a mixture of Category 1’s through 4’s and caused both serious destruction and loss of life and let me reiterate that some of the tropical storms did the same, not just the hurricanes, with both causing major flooding – of the order of 5-10 inches of rain – in some of the cases. Also, in several of the cases the high winds or flooding occurred on one part of the island – as small as 21 x 14 miles as it is – while other parts wondered what all the fuss about, so be aware of this when you look out and see nothing much happening that just a few miles away others could be in peril. Come the 1900’s and we had three hurricanes and two tropical storms and one tropical depression that made impacts, the latter three causing major floods in 1901, 1949 and 1970 varying between 10-20 inches of rain in different places. Longest gap between storms was 24 years (1919-1942). However, there were 8 Category Hurricanes during this period and 23 for the century. Here is a summary, compliments of an article on the Barbados Metrological Service (BMS) website called “Can Barbados be hit?” and includes the above quote from Mr. Best. This tells much of the story … Impacts since colonization
• 1780, October 10: Slow moving hurricane. Barbados battered for 48 hours. 4,326 dead; £1 million damage.
• 1694, October 17: Weak hurricane passes. Ships thrown ashore.
• 1813, July 22: Tropical storm passed north. Ships damaged.
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According to the records, mostly sourced from the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, in the 1600’s (since 1627) we had four hurricanes that cause major damage here and in the 1700’s it was five, with two causing much damage. During the 1800’s the number jumped to 9 hurricanes and 8 tropical storms with majority hitting us directly, with most causing destruction in varying degrees and some causing deaths – with both hurricanes and tropical storms causing deaths or missing people.
• 1786, September: Severe gale. Every vessel driven ashore. Great damage to homes and crops. Many people killed.
A History of Tropical Storms & Hurricanes affecting Barbados and how potential external factors affected all of this and a bit more... By David Brooks
• 1674, August 10: Very strong hurricane. 300 buildings destroyed; 200 dead; no sugarcane for two years.
We’ve had varied experience with Tropical Storms and Hurricanes here in Barbados since our known history began in the early 1600’s. Mostly it has been Hurricanes that have been noted in the records due to their intensity and devastation caused, but keep in mind that there were probably many unmentioned Tropical Storms that affected us to a lesser expect and so did not get mentioned unless they were accompanied by something like major flooding that caused major damage or loss of life.
• 1822, December 19: Hurricane passed north; winds from south and west; very heavy seas.
• 1848, September 18: Tropical storm passed north dumping much rain.
• 1846, September 11: Severe tropical storm passed south and drove vessels ashore.
• 1872, September 8: Severe thunderstorm. Between 8.01 and 11.02 inches of rain.
• 1831, August 10: Severe hurricane. Over £2 million damage; 1,525 dead.
• 1886, August 15: Hurricane passed 40 miles north of Barbados. Gale force winds; 7-9 inches of rain; floods in St. Michael; landslides in St. Joseph and St. Thomas
• 1963, September 24: Hurricane Edith passed 50 miles south; 7 to 8 inches rain.
• 1980, August 3: Hurricane Allen passed north of Barbados. Destroyed about 35 houses and damaged 200 more.
FEATURE Since 2000, we’ve had 14 cyclonic systems that have passed sufficiently close to cause some impact, some little of nothing to others that did more, with the latter being Tomas in 2010 and Iris in 2021. I won’t get into more details about these as most of us would have been around and more information can easily be found on the internet, etc. So, as you can see there has been much fluctuation of systems over the years and damaged caused not only by high winds but by major flooding, so not even on the side where the system passes. Same goes for high seas and coastal and shipping damage. These are the historical facts as best we know them and as mentioned we can see that there have been fluctuations and maybe cycles over the decades and centuries, yet there is more to it and Climate Change has something to do with it but not all. This is what I will try to explain as best I can without getting too technical. One thing I would like to make clear is that not every “major” or “unusual” (or freak) event is caused by climate change. We run the risk of losing the support of people if we “cry wolf” too often and when we need them to act then there could be a problem with apathy. This has been my mantra all along and also that we still need more research and understanding of the global climate processes and even many of the scientists say they still don’t understand everything – something not readily reported by some journalists (or even politicians) looking to hype things up. That said, we do need to make changes but no one solution will likely to be “the be all and end all” of it.
• 1816, September 15: Hurricane passed north. Heavy rains; severe flooding; stores damaged.
• 1901, July 2: Tropical storm passed south. Severe floods, more than 20 inches of rain in St. Peter killing one person.
Let’s look at what we know more about and that is mainly been during the 20th century (1900’s) and what scientists think caused the reduction of systems prior to the uptick we’ve seen in the last couple of decades or so. Many of you would recall the threat or depletion to the Ozone Layer, or Ozone Hole over Antarctica, discovered back in the early 1980’s. This was linked to the production of CFCs (or chlorofluorocarbons), halons, and other ozone-depleting chemicals, many of them known collectively as aerosols going into the atmosphere, which were banned due to the adoption of the Montreal Protocol in 1987 and came into effect in 1989. Since then, Ozone levels started to stabilize by the mid1990s and began to recover in the 2000s and will be in recovery for some time, but the majority of it has taken place and NASA reported in 2019 that it was at it smallest since first discovered. In fact, each year it goes through a fluctuation in size which begs the question of whether this may have been happening, on a smaller scale, all along but exasperated by the artificial aerosols.
A new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study published in May this year entitled “Reducing human-caused air pollution in North America & Europe brings
• 1955: September 22: Hurricane Janet passed south of Barbados. Winds over 110 mph damaged or destroyed 8,100 small houses, 20,000 homeless.
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• 1819, October 13: Hurricane. Two dead; heavy rains; Foster Hall landslides; ships wrecked;
• 1970, October 1: Tropical depression. Flooding in Bridgetown and St. Michael.
• 1837, July 9: Tropical storm hit island. Vessels thrown ashore; one church destroyed; chimneys blown down.
• 1898, September 10: Strong hurricane passed south. 83 dead; 9,937 houses destroyed, 4,519 damaged; 50,000 homeless.
• 1815, September 29: Hurricane passed north of island. Gale force winds experienced.
• 1817, October 21: Passing hurricane damaged ships;
• 1855, August 24: Tropical storm killed three; drove boats ashore. Rainfall was 9 inches at Edgecumbe and 10.36 inches at Bayfield.
• 1894, October 12: Tropical storm passed north-west. Destroyed hundreds of homes; 18 fishermen missing.
• 1949, August 31: Weak tropical storm dumped over 10 inches of rain in St. Joseph, St. John, St. Thomas, St. George; 5 to 6 inches of rain in the north.
• 1877, September 21: Tropical storm passed over Barbados. No serious damage.
&
affecting Barbados 18
Some will want to jump and say … see this study means the warming is caused by the reduction of the air pollution but that does not explain the highs and lows and lower average global temperatures prior to 1900. Yes, industrialization and its air pollution started before the 1900’s but let’s face it not at the scale we’ve seen in the last few decades, so there is a mixture of effects and that alone could add many more permutations that could affect the weather/climate combinations than ever before – some of it natural cycles and some of it human caused – and that’s why it not a case of Global Warming but rather Climate Change, as extremes can be seen in both cold and heat. Its where they are happening and many other factors like ever increasing population – making more and more demand on industrialization and other resources – along with all the increased urbanization, with the sprawling concrete jungles that can be accumulative contributing factors, so appropriate development planning needs to be at the forefront. It’s a highly complex issue and best left to the scientists and try to avoid misinformation and spreading it further – the worse thing cane be taking part of the facts and running with them and jumping on a bandwagon.
FEATURE surprise result: more hurricanes” – with a sub-title “Research also finds that increased pollution in Asia may reduce tropical cyclones” – sheds some light on this and it turns out that some of the very aerosols or particulate air pollution that were cause an issue with the Ozone Layer and other areas seems to have been suppressing the formation of tropical cyclones (storms and hurricanes) for the most part of the 1900’s, just a few decades ago. The reason is that the particulate air pollution was keeping sunlight heat out or from getting to the surface – both land and ocean – and so now that we’ve fixed this then more warming has occurred as more sunlight is getting through, as it would have prior to the early 1900’s. Conversely, the increased air pollution over the western Pacific Ocean caused by China and India – which have a combined population of about 36% of the global population near 8 billion today, which was only 3.5 billion (global) around 1970, so keep that in mind too – which has been the Indian monsoon winds in the summer and thus inhibiting cyclone development in that part of the world. Mind you, as with the Atlantic etc. decades ago, they still have major hurricanes even if overall numbers were down. This is not a cut and dry case and one cannot make easy conclusions from this as all of this, as one has to remember that the weather (and our climate) is a collection of 3-dimensional systems working together or against each other, going from one extreme to the other while occasionally going through a balanced phase, even if fleeting. We have the surface to lower-layers, mid-level layers and upper-level layers and the actions or reactions are a combination of things that never quite brings out the exact same thing each time they close to what they were before. The long and short of it is that (a) its not an exact science, which comes of out of (b) we still are learning and many scientists will admit that and (c) even though consensus can be arrived at from time to time, it can be changed by new research and its data. But we work with what we have.
A History of Tropical
So, lets get into the formation of a cyclonic system and what can either stop it or break it up. I have included a quick summary of hurricane formation in Figure 3 and if all the conditions are in place it can go like that very quickly, however if any of those stages are interrupted or influenced by other factors it can mean either slow development or outright fuzz out. Stage 1 in Figure 3 is a relatively easy phase but as noted in Figure 4 wind shear can blow off the tops of the vertically developing cloud and if the upper winds are blow opposite or at different angles/directions to the lower winds it Storms Hurricanes
will disturb the development even more. You know the whirlpool (vortex) that occurs when you are letting water out of your sink or bath, move your finger or hand around, through it or over the top of it and see if it doesn’t cause it to weaken and even disappear – same thing in the atmosphere but caused by others systems (like your finger or hand) and they are influenced by another set of factors. All of these factors and more is what I was discussing above as I got to this point. Figure 5. As you can see from Figure 5, even a fully developed system can be affected by wind shear, which in turn can be caused by other systems – like other Low-pressure systems, High-pressure systems, troughs, fronts, dry air, etc. and these can exist either on their own at different levels in the atmosphere from the surface up to 60,000 feet (over 18,000 meters) or right through the whole thing top-to-bottom – moving all around them, hemispherical or globally, as they push and pull on each other. This Tilted situation can occur in development phases and dissipation phases and you can get come backs after it has passed through the “hostile” environment(s). The tilt is the reason why many times we see a low-level circulation in one location but the upper-level circulation – in the clouds, noted usually in satellite imagery – somewhere else. This was evident the day before Tomas (2010) developed into a Tropical Storm as it approached us here in Barbados – see Figure 6 – but they (NHC/BMS) were still calling it a Vigorous Tropical Wave and post-analysis long after it affected us showed that it was a budding Tropical Depression, if not one at thisThestage.later pass from the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) satellite – see Figure 7 – showed where the low-level circulation was, but the “tilt” straightened up a few hours after this image was taken and strengthen was on, which is now history. This is but one
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Figure 6. Figure 7.
FEATURE example of this but there can be so many combinations and permutations of this.
Feel free to ask to join our Facebook Group – Barbados Weather Watchers – you can get up-to-date commentary and info and ask questions and check out my own website at http://www.brohavwx.com Storms
A History of Tropical
& Hurricanes affecting Barbados 20
However, there are many other factors involved from low, medium to large scale systems that contribute either to enhance, suppress or neutralize things. Like the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) which is the major fluctuation in tropical weather on weekly to monthly timescales, moving west to east as it circumvents the earth – it brings enhancing conditions for cloud convection (rainfall) and so potential tropical development into larger systems – and Kelvin Waves that move likewise but more in weekly to fortnightly periods and alternate between enhancement or upper level divergence (air moving away from a general area, which helps upward lift for convection clouds to form) or suppression or upper air convergence (air moving inwards to a point and so causing more sinking air which brings fairer weather). If the enhancing factors syne up then you can get a increased activity, likewise the converse of that brings periods on no activity and dry or even drought type conditions and the in-betweens can vary quite a bit.
Likewise, Sea Surface Temperatures (SST’’s) play a big part and can be affected by ocean currents, Sahara dust and higher surface winds – strong High-Pressure system in the North Atlantic – that can cause surface currents to move along and force cooler water up to the surface. I hope I have been able to explain a few things and not confused you. Remember to take it with an open mind and remember that things are constantly changing, even the information from the science research. I would urge you to do you own research but resist only relying on what just fits what you want to believe –science and facts don’t work that way.
Don’tUntilWait A ToIsStormHerePrepare Restock your emergency kit and store in a safe place Pay attention to weather updates during the storm season Reinforce your roof and secure your home as early as possible321
