We’re currently sitting through a record dry spell. You may already have read about it. 27 days of dry weather starting in January before it was briefly interrupted by a little rainfall on 8th and 9th February. If you look around us, you’d see plenty of signs of our vegetation drying up. Green swaths of grass fields are turning brown. Trees are getting bare. More dead leaves litter the ground than ever.
It’s almost like we have a new season. Sort of like autumn. Leaves fall. Vegetation shed their leaves. Well, except that the air is as hot as ever. In fact, we had nice cool weather in January. Dry, but not hot. Now, it’s very dry, and very hot.
So hot, that we’re also hearing about record wild fires. Yes, sounds very unlike Singapore. Actually, we do have small little wild fires occurring every now and then, particularly during prolonged periods of dryness. But it’s certainly much worse this time around.
The SCDF reported four times as many wild fires this period than comparable period in previous years.
Such irony when not too long ago we were battling record rainfalls that, well, caused much inconvenience to us, if not damage to property and other disruptions.
Would you prefer rain or no rain?
Indonesia’s Riau has already declared a state of emergency over fires and haze brewing up around them. We, in Singapore, will need to start preparing for an early onslaught of the haze situation coming to us.