There’s a need to de-emphasize PAR

As I started writing this Wednesday morning, the persistent focus of all weather reports across all media platforms in the Philippines was that the supertyphoon with international name Mawar was going to enter PAR, or the Philippine Area of Responsibility, by around Friday. This focus on PAR is misguided and needs to be de-emphasized.

Of course I do not blame people if they get consumed by anxiety every time a weather disturbance approaches. The Philippines occupies a geographic frontline position in the northwest quadrant of the Pacific where storms are strongest and most frequent. Having seen some of the most devastating, just the mention of PAR can indeed be worrisome.

But sometimes the fears and the worries can be needless. In fact they can be costly and a waste of time. Contrary to how many people have come to understand it, PAR is not the storm itself. Neither does it mean a storm will actually jump on our backs. All it means when a storm enters PAR is that it is in our neighborhood.

So what exactly is the Philippine Area of Responsibility? PAR is a huge area in the Northwest Pacific that the Philippine weather bureau PAGASA is mandated by law to monitor and give Philippine-specific names to those storms that enter it. The area is so huge it even encompasses the whole of Palau, most of Taiwan, and portions of Okinawa and Sabah.

If a disturbance enters PAR, the PAGASA is mandated to issue bulletins every 3-6 hours. If the disturbance is not expected to hit land, PAGASA only has to issue bulletins every 12 hours. But because most TV stations now have their own meteorologists or tap PAGASA staff directly, the word PAR is now drilled into our consciousness, often in the wrong way.

The wrong way because in virtually all weather reports, whether by PAGASA itself or by the media, there is so much emphasis on a storm entering PAR and very little on whether it hits land, which is strange considering that there is probably four or five times more ocean inside PAR than there is land.

And so, because there is so much emphasis on the “entering” PAR and too little on whether a disturbance poses an actual threat, people tend to get spooked even if sometimes very unnecessarily. I do not wish to belittle the importance of vigilance and preparedness. But almost equally important is giving allowance for the mental health of people.

Those who have gone through the hell of a “Yolanda” or an “Odette” do not deserve to get needlessly rattled by any misapplication of such terms as “entering” PAR. Meteorologists and mediamen who report after them need to de-emphasize PAR and focus more on projected tracks, not categories. A storm big or small is a storm. It can kill and destroy if it hits.

Take the case of “Mawar” about which almost all reporting is focused on its being a supertyphoon and its entering PAR. People tend to panic if all they hear are the words supertyphoon and entering PAR. This paper’s editorial last Wednesday reported that preparations were in high gear in some areas. I am sure this was largely triggered by the media reporting.

It is good to be proactive but readiness must be coupled with common sense. Multi-agency forecasts do not see “Mawar” hitting land in the Philippines. And the US Navy’s Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center, one of the best, has downgraded it from a supertyphoon although this can still change again with so much warm ocean out there.

“It is good to be proactive but readiness must be coupled with common sense.”