Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

With over half the av­er­age June month of rain­fall falling with­in 36 hours, parts of south­ern Trinidad re­mained un­der­wa­ter for a sec­ond night last evening.

The pas­sage of a low-lev­el trough and fast-mov­ing trop­i­cal wave had brought mul­ti­ple rounds of show­ers and thun­der­storms to the coun­try since ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing, with ad­di­tion­al rain­fall yes­ter­day ex­ac­er­bat­ing flood­ing across the South Oropouche Riv­er Basin.

Across cen­tral and south­ern ar­eas, rain­fall to­tals ranged be­tween 75 and 100 mil­lime­tres, with iso­lat­ed to­tals ex­ceed­ing 150 mil­lime­tres across south­west­ern re­gions—name­ly parts of Batchyia Vil­lage and sur­round­ing ar­eas based on au­to­mat­ed weath­er sta­tion da­ta. An av­er­age June pro­duces 243.4 mil­lime­tres of rain­fall at Pi­ar­co.

The Ca­paro, Guaracara, Cou­va, Are­na, Cipero, Pa­pourie, and South Oropouche Rivers over­topped their banks be­tween Sun­day and yes­ter­day. While most riv­er over­flows from the had sub­sided by yes­ter­day, the South Oropouche Riv­er over­topped at Pluck Road, Wood­land; the SS Erin Road, Debe; and Boodoo Trace, Debe, yes­ter­day.

Based on da­ta from the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency yes­ter­day evening, the Aripo Riv­er was at 35 per cent ca­pac­i­ty; the Arou­ca Riv­er at 39 per cent ca­pac­i­ty; the Ca­paro Riv­er was at 19 per cent ca­pac­i­ty; and the North Oropouche Riv­er at To­co Road was at 37 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

The Ca­roni Riv­er at El Car­men was at 73 per cent ca­pac­i­ty with a slight rise, while at Bam­boo Set­tle­ment #3, it was at 64 per cent ca­pac­i­ty. The South Oropouche Riv­er re­mained at 100 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, over­top­ping in low-ly­ing ar­eas.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment (MoRDLG), they re­ceived 96 re­ports of flood­ing spread across five mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties—Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro (sev­en), Ma­yaro/Rio Claro (nine), Pe­nal/Debe (59), Princes Town (14, and Siparia (sev­en). Au­thor­i­ties al­so re­spond­ed to eight fall­en trees, two in the Diego Mar­tin re­gion and six in the San Fer­nan­do area. There was one land­slide in the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro re­gion, with two roof dam­age re­ports from the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro and Ma­yaro/Rio Claro ar­eas.

Mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions dis­trib­uted 780 sand­bags across sev­en mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, six mat­tress­es across two mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, eight tar­pau­lins across five mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, and one ham­per in the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

River­ine Flood Alert still in ef­fect

Af­ter the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day of rain­fall, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) ex­tend­ed the River­ine Flood Alert for South Trinidad un­til 5 pm to­day, up­grad­ing the alert to Or­ange Lev­el.

In their up­date on yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, they said, “Af­ter con­tin­ued rain­fall ac­tiv­i­ty, the riv­er lev­els of the South Oropouche, as well as small­er trib­u­taries in South­ern ar­eas of Trinidad, are near crit­i­cal lev­els or over­top­ping in some ar­eas (based on of­fi­cial re­ports).”

The TTMS added that ad­di­tion­al pe­ri­ods of rain­fall will like­ly con­tin­ue in­to to­day, which will re­sult in fur­ther el­e­va­tion of the riv­er lev­els. They added, “Note that run-off will be slow­er at high tide, which will be at 12.04 am (Tue. 13th) and 02.03 pm (Tue 13th).”

Mean­while, the Or­ange-Lev­el River­ine Flood Alert en­com­passed main­ly the South Oropouche Riv­er Basin, where the South Oropouche Riv­er and its many trib­u­taries over­topped their banks yes­ter­day.

Se­vere im­pacts are ex­pect­ed in the South Orop­uche Riv­er Basin for an Or­ange-Lev­el alert.

The pub­lic was ad­vised to fi­nalise prepa­ra­tions to pro­tect lives, liveli­hoods and prop­er­ty, and ac­ti­vate their safe­ty plan, se­cure food, wa­ter and med­i­cine for at least sev­en days in wa­ter­proof con­tain­ers, pro­tect im­por­tant as­sets and doc­u­ments, and not take un­nec­es­sary risks. The Met Of­fice al­so ad­vised the pub­lic to fol­low the in­struc­tions of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, mon­i­tor of­fi­cial sources for in­for­ma­tion and se­cure loose out­door items and live­stock.

A con­se­quence of cli­mate change

With a warmer cli­mate, al­though T&T has record­ed low­er over­all rain­fall in the Dry and Wet Sea­sons, ex­treme pre­cip­i­ta­tion has in­creased.

Since 1985, the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice has record­ed an in­crease in the num­ber of ex­treme sin­gle-day rain­fall events, ex­treme three-day rain­fall, and an in­crease in the per­cent­age of rain these ex­treme­ly wet days con­tribute to our an­nu­al rain­fall to­tals.