Time to break out your boots and raincoats, Saigoneers: Vietnam’s stormy season is right around the corner.
According to VietnamPlus, Vietnam’s weather forecast for the rest of the year doesn’t look good as the East Sea will see more than a dozen typhoons during the rainy season and El Niño during the dry season.
Le Thanh Hai, Deputy General Director of the National Hydro-Meteorological Center, told the news source on May 3 that El Niño is expected to cause prolonged droughts, and thus saltwater intrusion, nation-wide through the end of the year, especially in the Mekong Delta.
This prediction is corroborated by reports from foreign meteorology agencies such as Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology and the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction. Both expect El Niño to affect the Asia-Pacific region starting from July and remain in place through the rest of 2017.
Hoang Phuc Lam, head of the meteorological forecasting department at the National Hydro-Meteorological Center, shared that during the rainy season, Vietnam will be impacted by 13 to 15 tropical storms and depressions. However, Lam assured that the number of storms will be lower than last year, which was especially active, and the effects of El Niño will also be less severe.
"Although the number of storms and tropical depressions will decrease, the risk of strong storms is very high,” he said. “Localities should be prepared for a year of unusual occurrence of storms. El Niño will last until the end of 2017."
[Photo via NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]
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