The Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Drought and Pre­cip­i­ta­tion Mon­i­tor­ing Net­work (CDPMN) Wednes­day said de­spite the nor­mal to be­low nor­mal rain­fall out­look there should still be enough rain­fall to elim­i­nate a sig­nif­i­cant drought threat by the end of No­vem­ber.

In its Caribbean Drought Bul­letin for the month of Sep­tem­ber, the CDPMN said that the nor­mal to be­low rain­fall for the south­ern half of the east­ern is­land chain will be for the three month pe­ri­od to No­vem­ber.

“But be­ing amongst the wettest three month pe­ri­ods of the year, there should still be enough rain­fall to elim­i­nate a sig­nif­i­cant drought threat by the end of No­vem­ber. It is, how­ev­er, rec­om­mend­ed that in­ter­ests in the vicin­i­ty of St. Maarten and St. Vin­cent should mon­i­tor their wa­ter re­serves,” the CDPMN said.

It said in­ter­ests in the south­east of the re­gion, in par­tic­u­lar, should look out for an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion at the end of Sep­tem­ber to make sure there is no change as the end of the wet sea­son ap­proach­es at the end of No­vem­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to the bul­letin, long term drought is pos­si­ble in St. Barbs, Sint Maarten, St. Mar­tin, and St. Vin­cent.

It said ar­eas end­ing up in long term drought by the end of No­vem­ber “are like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence low­er than usu­al wa­ter lev­els in large reser­voirs, large rivers and ground wa­ter”.

How­ev­er it ad­vised “all stake­hold­ers to keep mon­i­tor­ing their en­vi­ron­ment for signs of drought”.