5-day weather outlook now available online

Fretting your stay in Boracay, El Nido, Anilao or Puerto Galera will be rained out?

Worry not. If you log onto the weather bureau’s website, you’ll be surprised to find a weather scenario in famous destinations not only for a day, but for five days.

To help tourists plan their getaway, the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) on Wednesday launched a weather outlook for selected tourist areas on weather.gov.ph and pagasa.dost.gov.ph.

The five-day outlook initially covers 12 destinations: Vigan, Baguio City, Banaue, Anilao in Batangas, Puerto Galera in Mindoro, Taal in Batangas, Naga City, El Nido in Palawan, Boracay in Aklan, Cebu and Davao, but will eventually be expanded to include other spots.

If you click on the site, you’d find the weather outlook for the 12 destinations from 10 a.m. Wednesday to 10 a.m. Sunday.   For instance, Vigan and Banaue are mostly cloudy with scattered rain showers and thunderstorms in those five days. Naga City, Cebu and Davao will be partly cloudy to cloudy with isolated rain showers/ thunderstorm during the same period, and so on.

“It helps people to plan,” Pagasa supervising undersecretary Graciano Yumul said in an interview, pointing out that the five-day forecast would guide island-hopping tourists where to travel next given the differing weather conditions in different parts of the archipelago. “In effect, they’ll become weather-ready.”

The move has been prompted by calls or queries on Pagasa’s Twitter account about a weather scenario specific to a destination, and by the bureau’s desire to boost tourism in the country.

“The Philippines has a goal of attracting more tourists. And one thing tourists would like to know is whether it will be raining in the destination they’re going to,” Yumul said. “If you’re a tourist, you want as much information as you can about your destination. For tourists, the most important element is the weather.”

In a way, this is Pagasa’s contribution to making the country tourist-friendly. It would be a big help if local hotels print out the weather outlook and post it at their lobbies for the benefit of foreign or local tourists, he added.

Thanks to data transmitted by manned synoptic and unmanned automatic weather stations, as well as complex weather stations built in or close to these destinations, the forecasters have been able to come up with a weather outlook specific to a destination.

“That’s the reason we can do this. We have basis for coming out with the weather outlook,” Yumul said.