Bracing for the bad Niño
By Herbert Vego
STARTING in October 2026, according to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), a very strong El Niño will bring below-normal rainfall and warmer temperatures across large parts of the Philippines.
El Niño refers to a long rainless period or drought due to a climatic aberration.
The state weather bureau warns that this climate pattern is intensifying rapidly and could become a record-breaking or unprecedented event lasting into the first half of 2027.
El Niño is forecast to continue until the first half of 2027 and may reach a very strong state before the end of 2026.
“The peak of El Niño will be from October to December, but impacts may vary depending on locations and the severity,” according to PAGASA Administrator Nathaniel Servando.
We wish it won’t be so.
It has been almost three months since early July this year, when PAGASA warned about a 92% probability of a “super El Niño” hitting the Philippines.
This corner responded by echoing the warning of Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. that El Niño could push many provinces into below-normal rainfall conditions by October.
Ironically, they failed to foresee the series of typhoons that would flood low-lying places nationwide between August and this month of September.
Anyway, that’s already water under the bridge. This time, PAGASA predicts below-normal conditions across the country in November. Patches of near-normal rainfall are forecast in some areas in Mindanao.
For December, PAGASA forecasts above-normal rainfall over most of Luzon and Western Visayas, while below-normal rainfall will likely prevail over most of the Visayas and Mindanao.
In January 2027, way below-normal to below-normal rainfall is predicted to prevail across the country, except for near-normal rainfall conditions in some parts of Mindanao.
The whole country is expected to experience way below-normal to below-normal rainfall in February.
In fact, the cyclical El Niño phenomenon occurs every three to five years. But usually, it does not linger long enough to paralyze agricultural productivity.
El Niño could be followed by La Niña — the kind of long, rainy and stormy season that brought Typhoon Frank and six-foot floods to Iloilo City and neighboring towns in 2008.
The El Niño/La Niña climatic succession in diverse places is just one of the four impacts of global warming that desperately cry out for solutions if we are to survive. The three others are sea-level rise, temperature rise and rainfall variability.
Let us remember, however, that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
As gathered from the Office of the Iloilo Provincial Agriculturist, the best way to prepare for the rainless months is to plant alternative crops — say, mongo — that hardly need water to grow.
We also have to prepare ourselves for the discomfort and possible ailments that heat
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