Trinidad and To­ba­go may be on the verge of the of­fi­cial start of the Wet Sea­son.

Yes­ter­day, most of Trinidad awoke to heavy rain­fall and gusty winds in some ar­eas due to the con­ver­gence of winds in the low­er lev­els of the at­mos­phere, cou­pled with favourable up­per lev­el con­di­tions, en­hanc­ing the al­ready un­sta­ble set­up.

The ini­tial Yel­low Lev­el Ad­verse Weath­er Alert (#1) was is­sued on Fri­day (May 16) af­ter­noon, to take ef­fect at 6 pm on Sat­ur­day, May 17, un­til 6 pm on Sun­day, May 18. Heavy rain­fall and thun­der­storms de­vel­oped around 2 am on Sun­day and peaked in the hours sur­round­ing sun­rise. The alert was sub­se­quent­ly up­dat­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing, with the end time ex­tend­ed un­til 6 pm to­day.

In some ar­eas, rain fell con­sis­tent­ly for 12 hours.

Thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty grad­u­al­ly de­creased as the morn­ing pro­gressed, lead­ing to an over­cast af­ter­noon with per­sis­tent light rain over most ar­eas. Rain­fall ac­cu­mu­la­tions (sourced from pri­vate weath­er sta­tions and post­ed on so­cial me­dia) showed wide­spread two to four inch­es of rain­fall, and iso­lat­ed ar­eas near six inch­es. With soils al­ready sat­u­rat­ed in some ar­eas from Sat­ur­day’s rain­fall, flood­ing was like­ly. There were is­land-wide re­ports of street flood­ing, with ar­eas in Cen­tral and South­east­ern Trinidad ob­serv­ing flash and pos­si­bly river­ine flood­ing. Usu­al­ly, river­ine flood­ing is ob­served af­ter pro­longed rain­fall, how­ev­er, on­go­ing main­te­nance and up­grade works along a few wa­ter­cours­es ex­ac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion, most no­tably along the Cunu­pia Riv­er in the vicin­i­ty of Hinkin and Mon Plasir Roads.

There is al­so sig­nif­i­cant de­bate on the weath­er fea­ture that pro­duced this ac­tiv­i­ty. Many so­cial me­dia pages in­di­cat­ed that it was the ITCZ.

Analy­sis from the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre and the Bar­ba­dos Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices showed the ITCZ south of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The TTMS is­sued a sec­ond up­date (Ad­verse Weath­er Alert #3) late Sun­day af­ter­noon, in­di­cat­ing that the In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ) was grad­u­al­ly mi­grat­ing north­ward and was ex­pect­ed to bring iso­lat­ed thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty to­day.

Once con­firmed, this may trig­ger the start of the 2025 Wet Sea­son, based on the TTMS’ cri­te­ria.

Riv­er lev­els as of 4 pm yes­ter­day showed that the Ca­roni Riv­er (at Bam­boo #3, El Car­men, Manuel Con­go and Tumpuna) and the Cunu­pia Riv­er were above 70% ca­pac­i­ty. These lev­els were ex­pect­ed to rise fur­ther in­to the evening as runoff con­tin­ued, and with the near­est high tide at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9 pm.

Look­ing ahead, the first Trop­i­cal Wave has been analysed by the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre, and it is pro­ject­ed to pass over Trinidad and To­ba­go on Sun­day, May 25.