Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go was spared wide­spread in­clement weath­er yes­ter­day, al­though the coun­try wel­comed much-need­ed rain­fall.

With heavy show­ers and thun­der­storms mov­ing across both is­lands from the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day, lo­calised flood­ing was re­port­ed along the East­ern Main Road in Tu­na­puna, St Au­gus­tine and St Joseph, as well as along Farm Road, St Joseph, parts of Ari­ma, and along the Cou­va Main Road, Cou­va.

Most ar­eas saw be­tween five and 15 mil­lime­tres of rain­fall, with iso­lat­ed to­tals ex­ceed­ing 25 mil­lime­tres across parts of north­ern T&T.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) al­so re­spond­ed to a fall­en tree that brought down pow­er lines along Sad­dle Road, near the North Coast Road in­ter­sec­tion.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) had placed the coun­try un­der an Ad­verse Weath­er Alert (Yel­low Lev­el) from 10 pm on Sun­day through 5 pm yes­ter­day, which was dis­con­tin­ued yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. In the Met Of­fice’s dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the alert, they stat­ed, “The po­ten­tial for im­pact­ful weath­er has de­creased con­sid­er­ably.”

It not­ed, how­ev­er, that there was still the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ac­tiv­i­ty con­tin­u­ing through this morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, yes­ter­day’s in­clement weath­er was caused by an area of low pres­sure to the north-north­east of the Less­er An­tilles, along with a trough in the mid-lev­els at our lat­i­tude, work­ing to­geth­er to draw lots of equa­to­r­i­al mois­ture, gen­er­al­ly from the south-south­west to south­east, across Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Less­er An­tilles. They added that due to winds con­verg­ing near the sur­face, and clock­wise-turn­ing winds through the at­mos­phere, thun­der­storms are de­vel­op­ing and mov­ing from the south-south­west to north/north-north­east across T&T and the Less­er An­tilles.

While the in­clement weath­er did not of­fi­cial­ly sig­nal the start of the 2023 Wet Sea­son, as no trop­i­cal waves or the In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone have moved across T&T and pro­duced mea­sur­able rain­fall, the at­mos­phere is tran­si­tion­ing to a Wet Sea­son pat­tern.

To­day, the Met Of­fice fore­casts, “Most­ly set­tled con­di­tions to pre­vail af­ter some iso­lat­ed morn­ing and ear­ly af­ter­noon show­ers. There is a low to medi­um chance some of the af­ter­noon show­ers could be­come heavy and or thun­dery.”