Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) has de­clared the start of the 2023 Wet Sea­son.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, the of­fi­cial start to the coun­try’s wet sea­son is marked by mea­sur­able rain­fall (0.1 mm) pro­duced by a Trop­i­cal Wave and/or the In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ), both of which are the main weath­er-pro­duc­ing fea­tures of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wet sea­son.

They added that the Met Of­fice has been track­ing the trop­i­cal wave for the last 10 days, which moved off the west coast of Africa on May 15, 2023.

The trop­i­cal wave be­gan af­fect­ing T&T Fri­day af­ter­noon, pro­duc­ing mea­sur­able rain­fall across parts of both is­lands.

The TTMS said, “For to­day, Fri­day, May 26, 2023, at 2 pm, Pi­ar­co mea­sured 0.1mm of rain­fall, with high­er ac­cu­mu­la­tions record­ed in oth­er ar­eas. As the day pro­gress­es, this TW will con­tin­ue to af­fect T&T, with the most en­hanced weath­er re­main­ing over east­ern off­shore ar­eas. Across both is­lands, there is a medi­um chance (60%) of heavy show­ers and/or thun­der­storms with ac­com­pa­ny­ing gusty winds. With the pas­sage of this Trop­i­cal Wave, the ITCZ, which is cur­rent­ly south of 10N, is ex­pect­ed to grad­u­al­ly mi­grate north­ward over the week­end, in­creas­ing the po­ten­tial for show­ers and iso­lat­ed thun­der­storms across T&T.”

The next Trop­i­cal Wave that the TTMS is track­ing is fore­cast to pass ear­ly next week.

Look­ing at wider-scale con­di­tions for the up­com­ing months, the Met Of­fice said, “Cur­rent­ly, the El Niño South­ern Os­cil­la­tion (EN­SO) con­di­tions re­main neu­tral; how­ev­er, a tran­si­tion to El Niño con­di­tions is like­ly to oc­cur with­in the next two months. Giv­en this, the 2023 wet sea­son out­look for Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­pects near nor­mal to slight­ly wet­ter con­di­tions for the first half of the sea­son, while for the sec­ond half, near nor­mal to slight­ly dri­er con­di­tions are fore­cast.”

Cli­ma­to­log­i­cal­ly, T&T’s wet sea­son can ex­tend in­to De­cem­ber be­fore com­plete­ly tran­si­tion­ing in­to the dry sea­son in Jan­u­ary.

The 2023 At­lantic Hur­ri­cane Sea­son of­fi­cial­ly be­gins on June 1 and con­tin­ues through No­vem­ber 30, falling with­in T&T’s lo­cal Wet Sea­son.