KALAIN HO­SEIN

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Amidst heavy rain­fall overnight and in­to this morn­ing, and with ad­di­tion­al rain­fall now de­vel­op­ing across the coun­try, the TTMS up­dat­ed the Ad­verse Weath­er Alert (Yel­low Lev­el) at 12:19 PM to­day, ex­pand­ing it for the en­tire coun­try, and ex­tend­ing it un­til 8:00 PM to­day.

Flood­ing overnight oc­curred as heavy show­ers and thun­der­storms per­sist­ed for five to six hours, in­un­dat­ing South­ern Trinidad, and send­ing the South Oropouche Riv­er to thresh­old lev­els. Parts of Bar­rack­pore, Pe­nal and now Debe are in­un­dat­ed, with wa­ters re­ced­ing in parts of Moru­ga and Siparia.

The Alert—which ini­tial­ly went in­to ef­fect at 10:00 AM—re­mains in ef­fect un­til 8:00 PM to­day for both is­lands.

The Met Of­fice ex­plained:

“Low lev­el mois­ture and con­ver­gence will con­tin­ue to af­fect To­ba­go with vary­ing in­ten­si­ties and will spread across vary­ing lo­cal­i­ties over Trinidad dur­ing the next few hours. Mod­er­ate to heavy show­ers can lead to street, flash flood­ing and lo­cal­ized pond­ing in some ar­eas. Gusty winds and chop­py seas can be ex­pect­ed in the vicin­i­ty of heavy down­pours. There is the con­tin­ued like­li­hood of land­slides and top­pling trees in ar­eas so prone.”

For a yel­low-lev­el, mod­er­ate alert, there is the po­ten­tial for pos­si­ble in­juries, where be­hav­iour­al changes are re­quired to en­sure safe­ty. There may be mi­nor dam­age to prop­er­ty, with in­come-earn­ing tem­porar­i­ly dis­rupt­ed and a cou­ple of com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed.

The TTMS is ad­vis­ing the pub­lic to se­cure items that may be af­fect­ed by flood wa­ters and do not ven­ture in­to flood wa­ters, to be vig­i­lant to chang­ing weath­er con­di­tions in your area, as well as to mon­i­tor of­fi­cial weath­er up­dates and re­ports.

The Met Of­fice’s fore­cast for to­day calls for:

“Part­ly cloudy/ oc­ca­sion­al­ly cloudy pe­ri­ods with show­ers, at times heavy, will like­ly in­ter­rupt sun­shine over vary­ing ar­eas. There is a 60-70% (medi­um-high) chance of few iso­lat­ed thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty. Night will be part­ly cloudy oc­ca­sion­al­ly with few show­ery spells. Gusty winds and street/flash flood­ing can oc­cur in the event of heavy show­ers or thun­der­storms.”

This ac­tiv­i­ty is due deep low-lev­el mois­ture and con­ver­gence as­so­ci­at­ed with the In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ) fol­low­ing the pas­sage of a trop­i­cal wave yes­ter­day, and ahead of an­oth­er trop­i­cal wave set to move across the coun­try to­mor­row (Thurs­day).

The ITCZ is an area where trade winds meet in the At­lantic Ocean, lead­ing to a band of cloudi­ness, show­ers and thun­der­storms.