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Friday, February 28, 2025

High winds bring hazardous seas!

by

Jean-Marc Rampersad
38 days ago
20250121
File: Rough Seas at the Cocorite Fishing Facility in Cocorite.

File: Rough Seas at the Cocorite Fishing Facility in Cocorite.

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad

@guardian.co.tt

Windy con­di­tions may of­fer some re­lief from the heat but this week they can be strong enough to be­come a haz­ard.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) has is­sued two Yel­low Lev­el Alerts – for High Winds and Haz­ardous Seas, both cur­rent­ly in ef­fect un­til 6 pm Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 23.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, there is a high po­ten­tial (85%) for wind gusts ex­ceed­ing 55 km/h dur­ing the pe­ri­od and main­ly ex­pect­ed in the vicin­i­ty of show­ers.

The TTMS ad­vised, “Al­though the stronger gusts may be brief, they are ca­pa­ble of dis­plac­ing un­se­cured roofs, loose out­door items, and can even top­ple trees and weak struc­tures.”

These high winds have al­so made sea con­di­tions oc­ca­sion­al­ly rough, with the TTMS con­firm­ing wave heights ex­ceed­ing 3.0 me­tres in open wa­ters. The TTMS stat­ed that these con­di­tions are like­ly to be per­ilous for off­shore ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing fish­ing and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties. The strong winds and large waves can lead to an in­creased risk of rip cur­rents, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant haz­ard to swim­mers and beach­go­ers.

As of 3.43 pm yes­ter­day, there were no dis­rup­tions to the In­ter-Is­land Fer­ry or Wa­ter Taxi ser­vices ac­cord­ing to NID­CO’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment.

The TTMS ad­vised all ma­rine in­ter­ests to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion and for beach­go­ers, in par­tic­u­lar, to heed the in­struc­tions of life­guards and oth­er rel­e­vant of­fi­cials.

The Haz­ardous Seas Alert was al­so dif­fer­ent to the pre­vi­ous two is­sued this year, as those con­di­tions were gen­er­at­ed by long-pe­ri­od swells. Cur­rent con­di­tions are be­ing gen­er­at­ed by strong low-lev­el winds.

For the year, so far, 13 of the 21 days have had a Haz­ardous Seas Alert in ef­fect. This is ex­pect­ed to be a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence as the TTMS re­cent­ly de­clared the start of the 2025 Dry Sea­son on Jan­u­ary 14, in­di­cat­ing that the fea­tures (clos­er Sub-Trop­i­cal High-Pres­sure cell and Mid-Lat­i­tude sys­tems) caus­ing these con­di­tions are to be ex­pect­ed in­ter­mit­tent­ly over the next few months.


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