T&T, Barbados Doppler providing loads of weather data, warnings to public

Clairmonte Williams

While the $500 million EU-funded Doppler Radar system here has failed to deliver the goods,  its counterparts in Barbados and Trinidad are producing streams of data and frequent dangerous-weather warnings.

Quite visible is the local radar’s inability to play a meaningful role in informing Guyanese of adverse weather conditions in advance. This was made clear on November 27th when Regions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10 experienced exceptionally heavy rainfall that no one, including officials at Guyana’s Meteorological Office, seemed to know was coming. The result was that tens of thousands of Guyanese were caught off guard as floods abounded.

It resulted in Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon stating on November 29 that the