Vietnam should expect heavy storms in September

Though the rainy season will strike earlier this year compared to normal, the storm season will commence later, according to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting.

From now until May, it is unlikely that any storms or tropical depressions would form in the East Sea, which is known internationally as the South China Sea, Nguyen Van Huong, head of the center’s weather forecast division told Vietnam News Agency.

Yet in the following months, tropical depressions and storms would form on a more frequent basis, with around 10-13 storms expected to enter the sea.

The most powerful would hit around September and October, with more than half set to make direct landfall, Huong said.

Between June and September, tropical depressions and storms will mostly affect the north and north-central region yet those striking during the period from September until the year’s end would affect the central region.

The rainy season has already arrived in southern Vietnam, sooner than it should, due to La Nina, a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that lowers the sea surface temperature across the eastern equatorial part of the central Pacific Ocean and causes extensive weather effects across the globe.

Natural disasters like storms, flooding, and droughts caused damage worth VND37.4 trillion ($1.6 billion) in 2020, five times higher compared to 2019.

They left 357 people dead or missing compared to 133 in 2019, according to data from the Central Steering Committee on Natural Disaster Prevention and Control.

Vietnam was hit by 14 storms and several depressions that triggered heavy flooding and landslides during 2020. Of these, Molave made landfall over central Quang Nam and Quang Ngai provinces in late October as one of the most powerful storms that have ever hit the country in two decades.

Between late September and mid-November, the central region was hit by as many as nine storms and two tropical depressions that resulted in historic flooding that caused six central provinces a total loss of VND30 trillion ($1.29 billion).