The Nigeria Meteorological Agency on Tuesday said it predicted the violent storm which killed over five people and destroyed several properties across Lagos on Monday.
The position however is contrary to the agency’s earlier position that it was not possible for the agency to have predicted the violent storm.
Speaking in a telephone interview with our correspondent on Tuesday, the Director of Weather Forecasting, NIMET, Mr. Nnodim Ifeanyi, said the agency predicted the rainstorm, but was “faulty in the dissemination of the information to the public.”
He said the “sudden build-up” of the storm made it difficult for the agency to pass the information across to the public on time.
He said, “We predicted the rainstorm. Our officials on duty saw it building up from the Atlantic as early as 3am. The problem however was the faulty dissemination of the information to the public. The information could not get to the public on time before the storm occurred in the morning.
The director said although the transition period from the dry to the rainy season usually came with a violent storm, the devastating nature of the Lagos storm was a “one-off thing.”
“The Lagos storm is a one-off thing. It may come and it may not come again. The onset, known as the transition period between the dry and rainy season, is usually accompanied with violent storm. We have not gone out of the rainy season. But what happened with the case of the Lagos storm was that it was a sudden build-up. However, if it will happen again, we will predict it and get the information disseminated on time. We have hot lines of the National Emergency Management Agency, Nigerian Television Authority and some radio stations,” he explained
He said the agency would work harder to make the prediction of such storm effective in the future.
The agency had on Monday said the velocity of the storm was 40 knots while the amount of rainfall was 18.6milimetres.
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