JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, May 17, 2025

Howling horror

Bad weather leaves trail of destruction across Trinidad

by

Kalain Hosein
596 days ago
20230929

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Swel­ter­ing heat across parts of Trinidad yes­ter­day end­ed abrupt­ly, as roar­ing thun­der, strong winds and tor­ren­tial rain left sev­er­al with­out roofs and elec­tric­i­ty. Among the many places af­fect­ed was the Caribbean Air­lines hangar at Pi­ar­co.

Short­ly af­ter mid­day, ac­cord­ing to satel­lite light­ning da­ta, a sin­gle iso­lat­ed thun­der­storm de­vel­oped across south-cen­tral Trinidad and rapid­ly strength­ened, pro­duc­ing over 100 light­ning strikes per five-minute in­ter­vals. Fre­quent light­ing of this mag­ni­tude is a hall­mark of se­vere thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty. With­in 30 min­utes, dam­ag­ing gusty winds be­gan to sweep across parts of Gas­par­il­lo, in­clud­ing Bonne Aven­ture.

A nar­row area of heavy to vi­o­lent rain­fall and strong winds moved from Bonne Aven­ture to Tor­tu­ga, Preysal, Chick­land, Cunu­pia and Pi­ar­co be­fore the thun­der­storm dis­si­pat­ed.

Based on in­ci­dent re­ports from the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) and the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC), there were over 11 re­ports of blown-off roofs, with the ma­jor­i­ty oc­cur­ring in Bonne Aven­ture, Gas­par­il­lo, in­clud­ing Sur­prise Av­enue, Bonne Aven­ture Road, Phekoo Trace, and near the Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary School.

At the sec­ondary school, a tree and mul­ti­ple branch­es fell on­to a teacher’s ve­hi­cle, while gal­vanised sheets were blown on­to a car at Bonne Aven­ture Trace.

As the thun­der­storm took an atyp­i­cal path, mov­ing north­ward across the west­ern half of Trinidad, so did the trail of de­struc­tion.

Wind gusts up to 50 kilo­me­tres per hour blew off roofs in Cou­va at In­di­an Trail Vil­lage, Cunu­pia at Wall Street, Madras Road, and downed trees at Presyal at Boodram Lane. A sign al­so fell on a ve­hi­cle at the cor­ner of the South­ern Main Road and Chin Chin Road, Cunu­pia. With­in the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, a roof was par­tial­ly blown off on­to elec­tric­i­ty lines in Pi­ar­co at Gold­en Grove Road and Arou­ca at Farm Road.

Mean­while, gusty winds al­so caused dam­age with­in the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL), in a me­dia re­lease, con­firmed high winds as­so­ci­at­ed with the ear­ly af­ter­noon thun­der­storms dis­placed “sev­er­al gal­vanised sheets on a sec­tion of Hangars 9 and 10 at its Pi­ar­co base”.

CAL added that there “were no in­juries, all per­son­nel were safe, and con­trac­tors con­duct­ed an on-site as­sess­ment and se­cured the loose sheets.”

What caused the se­vere thun­der­storm?

Sev­er­al fea­tures came to­geth­er yes­ter­day to sup­port this sin­gu­lar strong thun­der­storm, which has some­thing to do with the swel­ter­ing tem­per­a­tures. In­tense day­time heat­ing led air near the sur­face to warm rapid­ly and rise. How­ev­er, ris­ing was strongest along west­ern coastal Trinidad, where west­er­ly winds from the Gulf of Paria at the low­er lev­els of the at­mos­phere met with sur­face east­er­ly winds that are more typ­i­cal for T&T.

When these air­mass­es col­lide, show­ers and thun­der­storms usu­al­ly form along west­ern coastal Trinidad, as they did yes­ter­day, but what was atyp­i­cal was the in­flu­ence of Trop­i­cal Storm Philippe well north­east of the re­gion, al­low­ing a south­west­er­ly wind flow at the low to mid-lev­els of the at­mos­phere. These atyp­i­cal winds at the low to mid lev­els, as well as a dry mid-lev­el at­mos­phere, sup­port­ed an en­vi­ron­ment favourable for a down­burst.

What is a down­burst?

Down­bursts are pow­er­ful winds that de­scend from a thun­der­storm and spread out quick­ly once they hit the ground, caus­ing dam­age sim­i­lar to a weak tor­na­do.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored