BAGUIO CITY — Frost formed Tuesday morning in Mount Pulag and in the village of Mt. Data in the town of Bauko, Mountain Province.
It is rare for tropical Philippines to experience frost, which is water vapor that solidifies when the temperature falls below freezing.
It happens during this time of the year, at the height of the onset of the Northeast Monsoon in the Cordilleras.
Mount Pulag mountain hikers
Mountain hikers who trekked Mount Pulag noticed frosted leaves and land surface along the trail at the summit area.
Clarita Lakwatchera, a Baguio-based travel and tours, posted the photos of frost taken by one of their tour guides.
Mt Pulag is the highest peak in Luzon, at 9,606 feet above sea level. A dormant volcano, it is located in the tri-boundaries of Benguet, Ifugao and Nueva Vizcaya.
Clarita Lakwatchera told republicasia she was not able to monitor the temperature at the time she took the picture at 5:50 am. But it was probaby around 4 to 5°C
Mount Data, Mountain Province frost
Jean Dulnuan, an employee of Mount Data Hotel, shared in her Facebook page photos of a vacant lot showing a bit of snowflakes on the grass.
“Andap,” she wrote in her Facebook post. Andap is a Kankanaey word for frost.
Dulnuan said her friend took the shots near a sawmill around 6:30 am. Temperature around that time is 9°C, the lowest they monitored for the month.
Four days ago, Mount Data Hotel also shared that it has been experiencing a drop in temperature. The wall temperature registered 13°C.
“It is cold from where we are right now and will be experiencing a colder temp in the following days,” Mount Data posted.
Relatedly, residents from Atok, Benguet said it was unusually cold Monday early morning.
One shared his mobile phone temperature reading saying it was 7°C around 5:40 am.
State weather forecasting agency Pagasa could not independently verify the drop in the temperatures in Bauko, Mountain Province and Atok, Benguet.
Pagasa’s Agro-meteorological Services based in La Trinidad, Benguet said the lowest temperature drop they recorded was 11.2°C around 7:56 am.
The prevailing Northeast Monsoon or amihan has been blasting cool air to northern Luzon for the past two months.
photos courtesy of Jean Dulnuan
