Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad

@guardian.co.tt

Brace for a wet week­end.

This was the ad­vice from the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) yes­ter­day, as it is­sued a Yel­low Lev­el Ad­verse Weath­er Alert for T&T, which comes in­to ef­fect at 6 pm to­day un­til 6 pm to­mor­row.

It warned of the medi­um po­ten­tial for iso­lat­ed thun­der­storms and as­so­ci­at­ed gusty winds, with heavy down­pours and pro­longed rain­fall that could lead to street and flash flood­ing.

It said gusty winds are ex­pect­ed to el­e­vate the risk of ag­i­tat­ed seas and the un­want­ed move­ment of un­se­cured out­door items and loose veg­e­ta­tion.

In the de­scrip­tion for the alert, the TTMS stat­ed, “Low and mid-lev­el south-east­er­ly winds are ex­pect­ed to draw equa­to­r­i­al mois­ture over our area, thus in­creas­ing at­mos­pher­ic mois­ture and in­sta­bil­i­ty this week­end.

“Se­cure any loose out­door ob­jects and live­stock. Con­tin­ue to re­main vig­i­lant and mon­i­tor weath­er con­di­tions, as­sess­ing your sur­round­ings be­fore ven­tur­ing out.”

While the is­suance of an Ad­verse Weath­er Alert dur­ing the dry sea­son is rare, it has hap­pened eight times pre­vi­ous­ly since the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the colour-cod­ed Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem in 2018. T&T is still of­fi­cial­ly in the dry sea­son but May is usu­al­ly re­gard­ed as a tran­si­tion­al month.

Mea­sur­able rain­fall (greater than 0.1mm) from ei­ther the ITCZ or a trop­i­cal wave is the cri­te­ri­on the TTMS us­es to trig­ger the start of the lo­cal Wet Sea­son.

The Met Of­fice said, “The In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ) re­mains well south of Trinidad and To­ba­go at this time and is ex­pect­ed to move over our area ear­ly next week.”

Based on the in­for­ma­tion in this alert, the wet sea­son could pos­si­bly be de­clared next week, de­pend­ing on the lo­ca­tion of the ITCZ.