News

Dry weather conditions to ease soon

December 16, 2019 5:01 pm

Fiji Meteorological Services Acting Director Teri Atalifo

The current dry weather in most parts of the country is expected to ease later in the week says Fiji Meteorological Services Acting Director Teri Atalifo.

However, Atalifo warns that despite indications of rain from mid-week, the next three months are expected to record below-average rainfall.

“We just came out of wet season and we received average rainfall and we will need a lot of rain and hopefully the peak wet season can give us the amount of rainfall that we are looking for but for December I don’t think that the amount of rainfall we receive now will be able to fully recover but at least an improvement.”

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Atalifo says the Western Division is currently either in the condition of a drought warning or meteorological drought.

A meteorological drought is when dry weather pattern dominates an area.

Atalifo says they continue to back the Water Authority’s statement stressing the public must use water sparingly as a number of stations have been recording below-average rainfall.

“So these are some of the effects associated with the El Niño effect as rainfall in Fiji turns to be suppressed in the first part of the wet season and that is exactly what we are experiencing as in November 80% of the stations received below-average rainfall.”

Fiji’s peak wet season is from January to March.