Heavy winds accompanied by a downpour on Monday caused some panic in parts of Craig and toppled two electricity poles along the Diamond Public Road.
Residents from three East Bank villages, Craig, Grove and Diamond, reported that “heavy rain accompanied by very high winds” besieged them for just over 15 minutes. The downpour, which caused Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) poles to topple in front of two Diamond homes, commenced sometime around 11.30am and came to an abrupt halt 15 minutes later.
“It was a sudden heavy shower,” a Diamond Public Road resident related, “and it came with the heavy winds…just how it came about 15 minutes later it just stopped and all of a sudden it was sunshine again as if nothing had happened.”
Similar accounts of the phenomenon were given by two Craig residents and three from Grove via telephone.
Two electricity poles, a short distance away from each other, were toppled by the heavy winds. One pole, located in front a house on the Diamond Public Road, was being supported by the telephone wires and threatened to fall on the resident’s house. The second pole, located in a street just off the road, toppled and rested at an angle against another pole. A GPL crew arrived at the location shortly after 12pm to address the situation.
Meanwhile, the Craig residents said the high winds caused their television antennae to be dislodged and even blew the fruits from their trees. A few zinc sheets were loosened on some roofs but none, residents reported, went flying.
“It was a bit unnerving,” one Craig woman told this newspaper, “I was wondering if it would develop into a big storm…imagine it was raining golden apples and all sorts of strange things today…the wind just sent things flying.”
This is the second such report of “unusual weather” coming from that section of the East Bank. Last October residents of the Diamond New Housing Scheme had given varying accounts of a freak storm which caused buildings to collapse, roofs and water tanks to go flying, and sent fences to the ground.
October 3 last year was described at “freaky Friday” by residents of the housing scheme. A section of the community had reported that a “circle wind” which came with a 15-minute downpour had wreaked havoc in the area.
The Hydromet office had forecast that the dry weather phenomenon, El Nino, would strengthen this month. The outlook for the next two months, based on all climate models surveyed, is that El Nino will continue for the remainder of 2009, Bhaleka Seulall, the Acting Chief Hydromet Officer said at a press conference on November 23.
Seulall had said the probability of El Nino conditions persisting through the December/January season is reasonably high. “As a result, what can happen in Guyana is that we will generally see near normal or below normal average rainfall with high probabilities of below normal rainfall in the southern part of the country and this will continue,” she stated. A Ministry of Agriculture statement said that there is a 40% chance of below normal rainfall and the present conditions could prevail to March. It is predicted that for December instead of 26 rain days as is normal, there might only be 10 to 15 rain days.
When Stabroek News contacted the Hydromet office, Georgetown on Monday for a comment from Seulall an employee directed newspaper to the Timehri Hydromet office. “You need to contact the forecaster there,” the Georgetown employee said. However, the Timehri forecaster informed this newspaper that she was not authorized to speak to the media and this newspaper should speak to the acting Chief Hydromet officer who had “just stepped out” when the newspaper contacted her office a second time on Monday afternoon.
On Monday evening, around 6 pm, the villages were again hit by another bout of heavy rain and high winds.
