Don’t put your heavy-duty rain gear away yet—the southwest monsoon season isn’t over.
The weather system, which typically occurs around May to September, is also known as the summer monsoon or, vernacularly, habagat; it is a harbinger of the beginning of the rainy season. Whereas the northwest monsoon or amihan affects the Philippines’ east, the habagat dominates on the western side of the country.
The habagat is important in agriculture as it brings the water for our rice fields and reservoirs. At the same time, however, when it combines with the stronger and more frequent typhoons, it highlights how much and how easily lives and routines can be upended, as was the case during the July deluge. The bigger cities are especially impacted because of overcrowding, the presence of communities in flood-prone areas, and the lack of effective flood control systems.
Last month, adding their destructive power to the habagat rains were a trio of tropical cyclones—severe tropical storm Crising (Wipha), tropical storm Dante (Francisco) and typhoon Emong (Co-may)—with their onslaught over two weeks affecting almost 10 million people. According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, the interacting weather events killed 37 individuals and drove an estimated 7,000 families to seek shelter in 265 evacuation centers, with an additional 11,957 families receiving aid outside of the evacuation sites. Damage to agriculture and infrastructure worth almost P20 billion was also reported.
The monsoon and typhoon conflation shortly blew into other parts of Asia, wreaking havoc on Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, India, China and Indonesia, among others.
Meanwhile, in his message during the annual stockholders’ meeting earlier this year, First Gen chairman Federico R. Lopez had recalled of 2024: “Metro Manila’s flooding from Super Typhoon Carina broke records set by Ondoy in 2009, dumping 471 millimeters of rain in 24 hours.
“Across the Philippines, we experienced six destructive typhoons between October and November, resulting in 160 deaths, widespread destruction of homes, significant damage to public infrastructure and extensive damage to crops, livestock and fisheries. In each of these events we see families losing almost everything they have and, being uninsured, keep having to restart their lives over and over again in some vicious and cruel cycle of nature.”
That “extraordinary” season in cluded tropical storm Kristine (Trami), typhoons Leon (Kong-Rey), Marce (Xinying), Nika (Toraji) and Ofel (Usagi), and super typhoon Pepito (Man-yi) which soaked the country in October and November 2024.
While tropical cyclones may be classified according to their degree of intensity, the Philippines’ state weather bureau bases its classification on associated winds, a system it has been using for the past three years: tropical depression (maximum sustained winds of up to 62 kilometers per hour), tropical storm (62-88 kph), severe tropical storm (87-117 kph), typhoon (118-184 kph) and super typhoon (more than 185 kph).
Climate change contributes to the unpredictability of the habagat and tropical cyclones. Aside from being more frequent and successive, they batter the country with stronger winds, more rainfall and more landfalls even as rising sea levels exacerbate flooding. But we can achieve small acts—such as limiting or eliminating single-use plastics from our daily lives or spearheading cleanup drives in our communities—as our contributions to mitigating climate change. Another important measure we can take—as shared by the LINKED Group in their helpful tips on this spread—is to protect ourselves, our families and our communities from the effects of the phenomenon that are already here.
