By Precious Mills
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts (Thursday 7th September 2023) – “As Hurricane Lee continues to grow in intensity and size, we expect the wind feel to expand as well. For us here in St. Kitts, we’re going to be closely monitoring it.” So said Senior Metrological Officer at the St.
Kitts Met Office (of the St. Christopher and Air and Sea Ports Authority-SCASPA) Elmo Burke while speaking on Freedom FM’s ‘Issues’ programme aired live on Thursday 7th September 2023, joined in studio by his colleague Deputy National Disaster Coordinator at the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Oureika LennonPetty.
According to him: “There is a low chance of us getting sustained winds in the vicinity of storm force. At this moment, we are not anticipating that at a high level. In relation to rainfall, the early projections are …just about just over an inch of rainfall from the passage recognizing that the system is likely to pass quite a bit north from us .
The early estimates are in the vicinity of about 300 miles to our north. We’re gonna monitor it to make sure that the system safely pass our way before we discontinue any monitoring…” He went on to say: “We’re looking at increased cloudiness…some rain; more so Saturday into Sunday and deterioration in sea conditions are likely to probably last into the earlier part of next week.
As the system is north of us… we can probably see some northern swells in the area so there is the possibility that seas could be a bit choppy or rough into the earlier part of next week especially from the northern side of the island.” In giving advice to sea bathers and fishermen, he commented “we would recommend once sea conditions have started to deteriorate to avoid the seas as much as possible because it doesn’t make sense to put your life at risk so that would be our recommendation from the met office.” Also, concerning residents in the coast line communities on western side of island “especially those in half way tree area who live on the coast line, we’re asking you to monitor the coast line; monitor the sea action. If you are threatened and you have to move ‘[then] move.
At this moment, we are not anticipating any significant storm surge; nonetheless we’re going to be monitoring to see if they’ll be any changes or updates accordingly.” Burke said there is a potential for the increase in choppiness or increase in rough conditions to wrap around the island as we move through the weekendFriday/ Saturday. “So as we move later into the weekend [, the Caribbean sea side is likely to be impacted so first it’s gonna be the Atlantic side which is Conaree to Dieppe Bay side and then as the system moves north of us, eventually some of that choppiness ; rough conditions is gonna wrap around into the Caribbean Sea side.” Commenting on the latest on Hurricane Lee during his radio interview session that afternoon, Burke stated: “In relation to hurricane Lee, as of 11 o’clock that morning on the 7th of September Hurricane Lee was located 16.4 degrees north, 50.0 degrees west which put it at approximately 840 miles east of St.
Kitts and Nevis. It was moving in a west north westerly direction at about 15 miles per hour and has sustained winds of 105 miles per hour.” He pointed out that at 5 o’ clock, there was winds in the vicinity of 80miles per hour whilst adding “so persons would recognize that within a six-hour span, it has now increased by 25 miles per hour.
So it’s now going through the stage of rapid intensification that we would have been speaking about for the past few days.” The Senior Met Officer informed also that tropical storm force
