The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice has de­clared the be­gin­ning of the 2023 Dry Sea­son in Trinidad and To­ba­go. 

This year’s Dry Sea­son is not ex­pect­ed to be with­out rain­fall, as near-nor­mal to above-nor­mal rain­fall ac­cu­mu­la­tion is fore­cast be­tween Jan­u­ary and May. The Dry Sea­son is al­so nev­er with­out rain, but the over­all in­ten­si­ty and fre­quen­cy of show­ers, much few­er thun­der­storms, are sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced. 

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, most of the coun­try is like­ly to get a per­cent­age of av­er­age sea­son­al rain­fall be­tween 88% to 141%. 

Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceives, on av­er­age, three to eight 7-day dry spells and one to five 10-day dry spells in the dry sea­son. For 2023, ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, there is a 70% prob­a­bil­i­ty for three to five 7-day dry pe­ri­ods and one to three 10-day dry spells. 

In the Met Of­fice’s 2023 Dry Sea­son Out­look, there are rel­a­tive­ly mod­er­ate to high prob­a­bil­i­ties (40%-100%) across most ar­eas for sea­son­al rain­fall to­tals to ex­ceed the na­tion­al Dry Sea­son av­er­age of 412.0 mm. 

The TTMS added that there is a low (2%-17%) prob­a­bil­i­ty for to­tals to be in the low­est 10 per­cent of all dry sea­son rain­fall to­tals. 

Tem­per­a­ture-wise. the 2023 Dry Sea­son tem­per­a­ture out­look in­di­cates that near-nor­mal sea­son­al mean, max­i­mum and min­i­mum tem­per­a­tures are like­ly. Still, at least three to sev­en cold nights when tem­per­a­tures can fall be­low 20.0°C are pos­si­ble in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary 2023. 

What does this mean for you 

Re­cent rain­fall ex­cess­es dur­ing Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber 2022 have al­ready in­flu­enced sur­face wa­ter flows and riv­er lev­els. Wet­ter than usu­al con­di­tions will in­crease sur­face and ground­wa­ter recharge and stream flow rates. 

Wet­ter con­di­tions in the dry sea­son usu­al­ly in­crease breed­ing ar­eas for mos­qui­toes, flies, ro­dents, and oth­er wild crea­tures in and around homes and cov­ered dry ar­eas.  

The ear­li­er part of the dry sea­son is ex­pect­ed to be wet­ter than nor­mal and will like­ly de­crease bush, for­est, and land­fill fire po­ten­tial. 

The lat­ter half of the dry sea­son is ex­pect­ed to be nor­mal to dri­er than nor­mal. There­fore, the prob­a­bil­i­ty of bush, for­est, and land­fill fires is like­ly to in­crease. This will like­ly re­duce air qual­i­ty and neg­a­tive­ly af­fect per­sons with ex­ist­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry and oth­er ail­ments. 

What should you do? 

The Met Of­fice ad­vis­es the pub­lic to re­view their house­hold wa­ter plans and con­serve, store and man­age wa­ter safe­ly and ad­e­quate­ly. 

For the pub­lic sec­tor and stake­hold­ers, vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties need to be sen­si­tized on the neg­a­tive im­pacts of the fore­cast and ac­tions to be tak­en and raise aware­ness on dry sea­son agri­cul­ture, pest and dis­ease con­trol mea­sures, and bush­fires risk. 

Those in waste man­age­ment should ramp up con­tin­gency plans to mit­i­gate the pos­si­ble oc­cur­rence of land­fill fires. 

The Met Of­fice is al­so ad­vis­ing those in pub­lic health to re­view con­tin­gency plans to man­age dry sea­son spikes in vec­tor-borne dis­eases such as gas­troen­teri­tis and lep­tospiro­sis; and dust/smoke-re­lat­ed res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments.