Acting Director of the Department of Meteorology, Jeffrey Simmons sat for an interview with ZNS News to speak about the peak of the 2024 hurricane season.

The Department of Meteorology is currently monitoring three systems.  He said, “one Francine already forming in the Gulf of Mexico near the Bay of Campeche and then there are two others out in the Central Atlantic drifting toward the northwest heading into our area.  By that I don’t mean that they’re actually coming here to The Bahamas but they’re coming into the Caribbean area and then we’ll see where they go from there.  For the next several weeks we expect to see quite a few more developing in the Atlantic.”

Simmons also explains the possible cause why The Bahamas has had no hurricane threats thus far in this season,  “There’s been some talk about the dry air over the ocean and most of that came…there’s a paper out about it saying that most of that came from the moisture that was absorbed by the Saharan Dust  and also there was some volcanic eruption in Iceland last year.  So those dust particles would hang around and they are known to dry the moisture out of the air,” he said.

Though the systems currently forming pose no threat to the country Simmons advised that citizens prepare themselves in advance.   He said, “we need to know what to do.  We should already have our little hurricane cupboards set aside, stock all our food, have our storm shutters on the side ready to go so that when we at the Department of Meteorology issue hurricane warnings that it would not take long, within 24 to 48 hours people will be prepared to protect themselves from the impact of a hurricane.”

The 2024 hurricane season ends on November 30th.