‘Enhance skills of our forecasters’

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Meteoro­lo­gical Department needs to enhance the skills of storm forecasters in light of the floods in Penang, a climate expert said.

Prof Datuk Dr Azizan Abu Samah from Universiti Malaya said the heavy rains that hit Penang was re­­lated to Typhoon Damrey, a strong tropical cyclone that hit Vietnam.

“It did not pass near Penang but created a tropical storm as it circulated, beginning at the Gulf of Thailand on Nov 2.

“The tropical storm then moved across Peninsular Malaysia, bringing heavy rains over Penang and Kedah,” he said.

Prof Azizan said these tropical storms could develop very fast over a period of 24 hours.

Now and then: An aerial view of George Town taken yesterday evening (pic above) showing floodwaters have subsided. On Sunday, (pic below) many parts of the city was covered by floodwaters.  

“If you are an experienced forecaster, you can recognise something like this on a satellite radar image, and then be on alert on where it’s more likely to head by monitoring it closely.

“We need to further enhance the skills of our forecasters and strengthen MetMalaysia’s research service,” said Prof Azizan.

MetMalaysia director-general Alui Bahari was quoted as saying that the department had issued a yellow alert on Nov 1, as well as the subsequent amber and red notices, about the severe thunderstorm that hit Penang and Kedah on Saturday.

According to the MetMalaysia Facebook page, a red alert for Penang and part of Kedah was issued at 9.30pm on Saturday.

Asked whether the floods were due to climate change, Prof Azizan said that there was no direct link between climate change and the Penang floods.

However, there could be an indirect effect as climate change was said to cause more extreme weather, he said.

   

“There were huge floods in Kemaman Terengganu in 2013; Kelantan and Pahang in 2014; and Narathiwat, Thailand, last year.

“We can see clearly that extreme weather episodes are taking place frequently in recent years,” he said.

In GEORGE TOWN, residents are downloading myCuaca app into their smartphones to get weather warning alerts after the recent flood mayhem in the state.

The app was developed by MetMa­­laysia in 2015 to provide daily weather forecast.

Balik Pulau resident Hamidah Ahmad, 55, said she was introduced to the app by a friend from her neighbourhood watch when they were trapped in their homes on Saturday.

“It was a living nightmare as the main road to our neighbourhood was inaccessible and our telephone lines were down due to the floods,” she said.

Hamidah added that she found the app nifty because she could even add favourite locations to monitor the weather data over several days.