Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

Dur­ing the first half of every year, all eyes usu­al­ly turn to the reser­voir lev­els to de­ter­mine what im­pact the dry sea­son is hav­ing on our wa­ter re­sources.

While heavy rain­fall in Trinidad has been scarce over the past four weeks, the reser­voirs are in a favourable po­si­tion ahead of the 2026 dry sea­son, ac­cord­ing to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (WASA).

As of Jan­u­ary 5, Navet, Are­na and Hol­lis reser­voirs were at 96.54 per cent, 99.46 per cent and 94.55 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly.

All of these are near or above their in­di­vid­ual long-term av­er­ages.

For De­cem­ber 2025, To­ba­go ob­served sev­er­al “wet” days, al­low­ing the is­land to fin­ish the month with an above-av­er­age rain­fall to­tal. For­tu­nate­ly, this trans­lat­ed to a 99.9 per cent reser­voir lev­el at Hills­bor­ough.

De­spite the re­cent “dry” pe­ri­od, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) has not de­clared the start of the dry sea­son, as we are still in a tran­si­tion­al pe­ri­od.

While some at­mos­pher­ic fea­tures, such as strong west­er­ly up­per-lev­el winds, the south­ward mi­gra­tion of the In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ), and re­duced rain­fall have been ob­served, oth­er fea­tures are not yet ful­ly es­tab­lished. One such fea­ture, the high-pres­sure sys­tem (for­mal­ly known as the North At­lantic Sub-Trop­i­cal High), is yet to com­plete its south­ward mi­gra­tion. Once in place, this usu­al­ly leads to stronger winds lo­cal­ly and oc­ca­sion­al rough seas.

The TTMS has al­ready is­sued its sea­son­al fore­cast, pre­dict­ing wet­ter than usu­al con­di­tions dur­ing the first half of the 2026 dry sea­son.

Sea­son­al rain­fall is pro­ject­ed to be 84 per cent to 124 per cent of the av­er­age, with on­ly 97 dry days an­tic­i­pat­ed, which is be­low the norm.

While tem­per­a­tures are ex­pect­ed to re­main above av­er­age, a few nights in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary may drop be­low 20.0°C.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, these con­di­tions will like­ly fur­ther bol­ster wa­ter reser­voir lev­els and ground­wa­ter recharge. How­ev­er, the com­bi­na­tion of warmth and mois­ture may in­crease mos­qui­to breed­ing sites.

While the wet start will ini­tial­ly sup­press bush and land­fill fires, the fire risk is ex­pect­ed to rise dur­ing the sec­ond half of the sea­son as con­di­tions re­turn to nor­mal dry­ness.

Over­all, the out­look sug­gests a short­er, less in­tense dry pe­ri­od than typ­i­cal years.