Freak storm triggers fright night
Published:Friday | October 2, 2020 | 12:16 AM
Talk-show host Emily Shields gasped as it tossed aside her 25lb flowerpot. Pollster Larren Peart said it smashed his lamp.
A security guard reported that trees were flattened aplenty in Lawrence Tavern, St Andrew.
And a Belvedere designer said she braced against her eight-foot glass doors as they threatened to be unhinged.
No, it wasn’t quite a hurricane. But a torrid few minutes of gusty winds late Wednesday night might have puzzled Jamaicans about how a tropical storm sneaked beneath the radar to rattle as many windows as it did nerves.
From dismantled billboards to toppled trees, many Kingstonians were blown away by the storm-force winds.
Director of corporate communications and customer experience at the Jamaica Public Service Company, Winsome Callum, confirmed that the heavy winds caused power outages across sections of the island.
Carolyn Peck, meteorologist at the Meteorological Service of Jamaica, said that Wednesday’s breezy blast was a squall that measured up to 40 knots, or 46 miles, per hour. She said it was caused by a tropical wave moving across the island.
Peck said that the Meteorological Service was still monitoring a system to the southwest of Jamaica that stood a high chance of becoming a depression at the weekend.
She explained how such systems tend to be “selfish” as they are formed.
“Hurricanes and storms need their eyewall, so they pull every available moisture from everywhere and wrap it around themselves to keep it nice and tight so it can develop,” Peck told The Gleaner.
“It is moving west and is expected to interact with a cold front that is now across the Yucatan Peninsula.”