“It only takes one.”

By Staff Writer

With those sombre and sage words from vast experience forecasting and tracking weather systems, John Tibbets, the Director General of the Cayman Islands National Weather Service, has set the tone for how Cayman should approach this, and any, hurricane season.

While the official projection for the 2025 season is that it will be less intense than the 2024 record, both the Cayman Islands National Weather Service (CINWS) and Hazard Management Cayman Islands (HMCI) are urging residents to get and stay prepared.

The hurricane season runs from June 1st to November 30th.

Appearing on Cayman Conversations with Ralph Lewis, publisher of Caymanian Times newspaper, both Mr Tibbets and his colleague Danielle Coleman, the Director of HMCI, outlined steps being taken at the official level and urged residents to follow suit.

“We want to make sure everyone’s ready for any eventuality.” the HMCI director remarked detailing the extensive preparations which have been taking place. These have involved training, digitally modelling scenarios using new AI technology, and operational collaboration with UK, US and regional disaster management agencies, alongside local outreach.

“We’re always trying to better our response capabilities and make sure that we are the cutting edge of any response, so every incident we have, no matter how big or small, we always do a very comprehensive debrief on it and make sure we’re learning from those.”

Significant investments have also gone into upgrading the  Cayman Islands National Weather Service(CINWS) reported its director John Tibbets, recounting the growth and responsiveness of his agency since it was established.

“What has become the National Weather Service today was an Aviation Weather office, a forecast office, and I remember going in with what was then the hurricane committee,” he recalled. All of that changed with Hurricane Ivan which struck the Cayman Islands as a Category 5 hurricane in September 2004, causing extensive damage and infrastructure disruption.

Mr Tibbets was at that point in the Cayman Conversations discussion making the point that despite 2025 being projected to be less intensive than the 2024 hurricane season ‘It only takes one hurricane’.

 “Every one of them was begging: ‘We need to form an organization like Hazard Management’. And it really took a hurricane to come here and whip us down to form that organisation.”

Now assigned to the Cabinet Office, both CINWS and HMCI have transitioned into fully professional organisations.

“We’ve got a weather modelling computer. We’ve got buoys coming, storm surge sensors coming. A lot of things are coming down the pipeline. A lot of it has to do with the Cabinet Office and the team that’s there in terms of supporting these two agencies,” Mr Tibbets said.

He also disclosed that the technical challenges which have affected the operation of the weather radar are now almost resolved and that the facility should be fully back online before the end of the year. Plans are also in place for the CINWS to be housed in its own purpose-built headquarters by next year.

In the meantime, the focus now is on the preparations for the 2025 season.

HMCI Director Danielle Coleman: “We strongly encourage the public to be ready for whatever season holds…We’re always happy to come out to schools, to service clubs, to churches. We do a lot of work with the elderly population…We do a lot of work with the private sector on things like business continuity. We’ve got training all week on business continuity, and again, making sure that all of our government plans are ready to go.”

She also urges the public to install the weather notification app on their phones.

From CINWS Director John Tibbets, the message is clear on the importance of being prepared: “It only takes one.”

Both experts strongly urge residents to rely only on the official channels for their weather information.