The top hurricane watcher in the United States has urged Barbadians and residents in the region to take the hurricane season seriously and brace themselves not just for severe winds during intense storms but also for flooding.Michael Brennan, Director of the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami, Florida, brought the message to journalists here during the second stop of a Caribbean Hurricane Awareness Tour, being organised by the NHC and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the Grantley Adams International Airport (GAIA) on Thursday.He said that though much of the attention surrounding hurricanes comes from the intensity of their winds, storm surge and flooding scenarios cause a significant amount of damage in the Caribbean.“We also can have impacts in Barbados from storms that pass to the north like Hurricane Tammy last year, [which] produced heavy rainfall. Rain flooding is one of the more dangerous hazards in the Caribbean, in particular in areas of topography and mountainous areas, and that has very little to do with how strong a storm is . . . it doesn’t take a Category 3, 4, 5 hurricane to produce heavy rainfall and catastrophic flooding on these islands. So people need to be prepared.”
