Ba sed on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) forecast cone, Tropical Storm Dorian will strengthen to a hurricane by Thursday. It is expected to sideswipe Puerto Rico before hitting the Dominican Republic and Haiti after which it will lose strength while dumping heavy rain on the eastern coast of Cuba, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and The Bahamas.

But that, as the NOAA points out in its bulletin, is the “probable path of the storm”. And although the agency has an excellent forecast record, there have been times, limited though they may be, when storms have changed course.

That is why we all must be prepared, regardless of the faith we place in weather forecasters. In fact, meteorologists will be among the first people to remind you to be prepared for any eventualities.

If Dorian stays on the course as forecast by the NOAA, Jamaica will be spared. We would not be surprised though, if the northern side of the island receives rain from the storm’s outer bands. But that will depend on the size of the system.

Either way, as we said, it is best to be prepared. Therefore we expect that the municipal authorities, with the assistance of the central government, will be doing more than has already been done under the $100-million islandwide drain-cleaning programme, making sure that all is in place to withstand the effects of storms and minimise the damage they bring.

At the same time, Jamaicans should acknowledge and accept that disaster preparedness is not the State’s responsibility alone. It is everybody’s business.

Outside of ensuring that our homes are sound and that we have emergency supplies of food, water and other essential items, we need to keep our environment clean, and avoid dumping refuse into gullies and drains.

At the start of the Atlantic Hurricane Season, Mr Evan Thompson, director of the Meteorological Service of Jamaica, again issued a reminder to the country that there is no time when we are not at risk from a tropical cyclone.

“From the season starts in June, until it ends at the start of December, Jamaica is at a position in the Caribbean that remains vulnerable,” Mr Thompson reiterated. “There is also the memory of so many systems that have impacted us over the last few years, we have almost had a threat every year … and it could happen at the beginning of the season, the middle of the season or at the end. So we must maintain our guard right throughout the six months.”

But Mr Thompson also cautioned that we need to “maintain our guard outside of the hurricane season because these days we have systems developing before, or even after the hurricane season starts”. That, of course, is sound advice, given the impact of climate change on weather patterns which could be exacerbated by the effects of the fires now raging in the Amazon rainforest.

Unfortunately, in this region we do not have the luxury of speculating whether hurricanes will hit us. It’s just a matter of when. Therefore preparation, we reiterate, is vital to our survival.

Our prayer at this time is that Dorian will dissipate and spare our sister Caribbean islands loss of lives and damage.