Kalain Ho­sein

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day, parts of Trinidad record­ed more than an av­er­age April month’s rain­fall in a few hours. The tor­ren­tial rain trig­gered street and flash floods across parts of cen­tral, north-cen­tral, and north­west­ern Trinidad dur­ing the af­ter­noon on Mon­day.

Which ar­eas were af­fect­ed?

As thun­der­storms and heavy rain­fall swept across Trinidad, flood­ing was first re­port­ed in Clax­ton Bay, along the South­ern Main Road. As rain moved north, floods quick­ly be­gan in Port-of-Spain along the typ­i­cal flood-prone ar­eas. Flood­ing oc­curred along Rich­mond, Ed­ward, St Vin­cent, Char­lotte, Park, Pem­broke, Aber­crom­by Streets, and In­de­pen­dence Square North and South. City Gate at South Quay in Port-of-Spain tem­porar­i­ly be­came im­pass­able. On­ly one of the four east­bound lanes on St Joseph Road, ex­it­ing Port-of-Spain, was pass­able ear­ly Mon­day af­ter­noon due to flood­ing.

Fur­ther north and west, street flood­ing oc­curred along Chancery Lane, Wright­son Road, Ari­api­ta Av­enue, War­ren Street, and Mu­cu­rapo Road, where wa­ters reached ap­prox­i­mate­ly two feet. Flood­wa­ters al­so en­tered sev­er­al busi­ness­es in north­west­ern Trinidad, in­clud­ing Massy Stores in St Ann’s.

Traf­fic be­came in­creas­ing­ly con­gest­ed head­ing west as flood­ing oc­curred along the West­ern Main Road at Care­nage and Co­corite, af­fect­ing east and west­bound lanes.

Fur­ther east, as an­oth­er round of thun­der­storms formed lat­er on Mon­day af­ter­noon, flood­ing oc­curred along the East­ern Main Road in Tu­na­puna. Sev­er­al ve­hi­cles stalled in Mal­oney, where mo­torists ven­tured in­to flood­wa­ters ap­prox­i­mate­ly be­tween one and three feet.

This sec­ond round of thun­der­storms al­so af­fect­ed flights at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, where vis­i­bil­i­ty dropped be­low one kilo­me­tre from 2.23 pm, dip­ping as low as 500 me­tres at 3 pm. This drop in vis­i­bil­i­ty caused BW1517, a Caribbean Air­lines flight from To­ba­go, to cir­cle the air­port, forc­ing it to re­turn to Crown Point to re­fu­el be­fore fi­nal­ly land­ing in Trinidad hours af­ter its sched­uled ar­rival.

Why did Port-of-Spain flood?

It is a ques­tion many took to so­cial me­dia to voice their ire, but the may­or of Port-of-Spain, Joel Mar­tinez, al­so had the same ques­tion.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Mar­tinez said he asked the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit (DMU) to in­ves­ti­gate the cause.

He ex­plained: “If you have flood­ing, one con­cern would be that the pumps may not have been on. I asked them (DMU) to in­ves­ti­gate to see if the pumps were not turned on be­cause, lis­ten­ing to one of the own­ers of a busi­ness near Cen­tral Mar­ket, they in­di­cat­ed that the pump may not have been on, and that may have been the rea­son.”

The may­or ex­pects to have the re­port from the DMU lat­er to­day.

What caused the rain­fall?

Iso­lat­ed heavy rain­fall dur­ing the Dry Sea­son is not un­heard of. In fact, on April 24, 2022, a year ago yes­ter­day, thun­der­storms al­so af­fect­ed parts of Trinidad, caus­ing a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion.

How­ev­er, con­trary to so­cial me­dia pages, the weath­er fea­ture af­fect­ing T&T is not the In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone, one of the fea­tures that trig­ger the start of the Wet Sea­son.

In a so­cial me­dia post, the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) ex­plained: “The TTMS has re­ceived many con­cerns from mem­bers of the pub­lic about the start of the rainy sea­son. The weath­er we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is NOT due to the ITCZ—which is a rainy sea­son fea­ture.”

Through Thurs­day, T&T will re­main un­der the in­flu­ence of an in­duced trough, an area of low­er-than-usu­al at­mos­pher­ic pres­sure that brings un­set­tled weath­er. Dry weath­er is ex­pect­ed to re­turn by the end of the week, bar­ring the odd, brief show­er.

Ex­treme rain­fall—a

con­se­quence of cli­mate change

Over the last 48 hours, parts of north­west­ern Trinidad record­ed up to 120 mil­lime­tres of rain­fall, over two times the month­ly av­er­age of rain record­ed at Pi­ar­co—which, for April, is 51.6 mil­lime­tres. On Mon­day, weath­er sta­tions across the coun­try record­ed up to 75 mil­lime­tres in iso­lat­ed ar­eas, near­ly one and a half times the av­er­age April rain­fall to­tal.

With a warmer cli­mate, though T&T has record­ed low­er over­all rain­fall in the Dry and Wet Sea­sons, ex­treme pre­cip­i­ta­tion has in­creased. Since 1985, the TTMS 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.