Experts Meet in Belize to Tackle Deadly Storm Surge Threat

With hurricane season fast approaching, international experts, meteorologists, and disaster managers are meeting in Belize this week for a high-level workshop aimed at improving forecasting and early warning systems.

The three-day training, supported by the U.S. National Hurricane Center and global partners, focuses on advanced storm surge modelling. This is technology that simulates how hurricanes of different strengths, speeds, and angles could impact Belize’s vulnerable coastline.

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist at the National Meteorological Service, explained that Belize was among the first countries in the region to benefit from this modelling. “Because of the fact that we are a country very vulnerable to storm surge, we were one of the first countries in the region to have been given the opportunity to get advanced storm surge modelling through this project,” Gordon said.

Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center, said the technology has advanced significantly. “We’ve had a relatively strong push in technology that’s enabled us to bring this capability, scale it up, make it quicker, and make it faster,” Rhome said. What once took years to develop for a single country can now be scaled up across the Caribbean in months.

Minister of Disaster Risk Management, Henry Charles Usher, noted the importance of learning from regional experiences, pointing to Jamaica’s recent encounter with Category Five hurricane Melissa. “It’s an opportunity for us to learn, for us to be better prepared, and for us to utilise the technology…to be better able to protect lives, protect property and ultimately to be able to bounce back in the event that there is some kind of natural hazard event,” he said.