This country was spared the wrath of Hurricane Beryl, which passed just north of T&T as a dangerous Category 3 storm, then strengthened to Category 4 by the time it made landfall in neighbouring Carriacou, Grenada.
However, a narrow escape from a hurricane packing in excess of 100-mile-per-hour winds and heavy rains should be treated as a warning, not a reason to lower our guard.
Beryl demonstrated how much climate change is threatening T&T’s position as a geographically safe location during the Atlantic hurricane season. In fact, it might only be a matter of time before this nation suffers a direct hit from a powerful storm.
In such a situation, complacency about warnings and watches could be almost as dangerous as the supercharged storms expected to cut a destructive path through this region during this season.
Unlike many of our Caribbean neighbours, the majority of T&T’s population has never experienced a tropical cyclone such as those that have inflicted loss of life and extensive property damage in other parts of this region.
Hurricanes don’t often make landfall here. They usually turn northward before they develop into major storms.
It has been more than 60 years since Flora made landfall in Tobago on September 30, 1963, as a Category 3 hurricane with winds estimated at 165 kilometres an hour. The catastrophic damage from that storm included 18 deaths in Tobago and two in Trinidad.
Since then, near misses and low-impact systems such as Tropical Storm Alma in 1974, two systems with the name Bret in 1993 and 2017 and Tropical Storm Karen in 2019, have given rise to the misguided notion that ‘God is a Trini.’
But now, with the passage of Hurricane Beryl reinforcing all the warnings from weather forecasters that this will be a hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season, this country must remain in a state of preparedness.
It took just a week for Beryl to develop from a tropical wave south of Cabo Verde, just off Africa, to the storm that registered at Category 4 when it made a devastating landfall in Carriacou yesterday.
Not only is it the earliest Category 4 on record in the Atlantic Ocean and the only one in June, but it also set the record as the easternmost hurricane to form in the warm waters of the Atlantic so early in the season, beating a record set in 1933.
Bearing in mind the forecast for 17 to 25 named storms this year, with as many as 13 expected to become hurricanes, this country and the rest of the region must brace for what is likely to be one of the roughest seasons in recent memory.
In addition, there is the immediate priority of supporting the recovery and rebuilding of the countries in the region that were in Beryl’s destructive path.
And as difficult and painful as it will be, lessons must be drawn from the experiences with Hurricane Maria, the deadly Category 5 hurricane that devastated Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and other parts of the Caribbean in 2017, and Hurricane Ivan, which was a strong Category 3 when it caused catastrophic damage in Grenada, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands in 2004.
Both caused billions of dollars in losses and hundreds of deaths, from which the region has never fully recovered.
There is a strong possibility that destructive storms are becoming the norm, not the exception.