Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

seigo­nie.mo­hammed

@guardian.co.tt

Even a near-nor­mal At­lantic hur­ri­cane sea­son could still bring dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing and dan­ger­ous­ly high tem­per­a­tures to Trinidad and To­ba­go this year, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) warned dur­ing the 20th Na­tion­al Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum (NCOF) at the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty Train­ing Cen­tre in Pi­ar­co.

Me­te­o­rol­o­gists yes­ter­day cau­tioned cit­i­zens against fo­cus­ing sole­ly on the num­ber of storms fore­cast for the sea­son, not­ing that trop­i­cal waves, in­tense rain­fall episodes and slow-mov­ing weath­er sys­tems have re­peat­ed­ly trig­gered se­vere flood­ing across the coun­try, even with­out di­rect hur­ri­cane strikes.

“A sea­son on­ly needs one trop­i­cal storm or hur­ri­cane to cause dev­as­ta­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” act­ing chief cli­ma­tol­o­gist Kaidar Kissoon said dur­ing the fo­rum.

He al­so urged cit­i­zens to con­serve wa­ter and strength­en pre­pared­ness mea­sures ahead of the of­fi­cial start of the At­lantic Hur­ri­cane Sea­son on June 1.

Ac­cord­ing to TTMS pro­jec­tions, there is a 49 per cent chance of be­low-nor­mal hur­ri­cane ac­tiv­i­ty and a 37 per cent chance of be­low-nor­mal trop­i­cal storm ac­tiv­i­ty with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s area of in­ter­est dur­ing the 2026 sea­son.

Fore­casts sug­gest ap­prox­i­mate­ly three named storms are most like­ly to de­vel­op with­in the re­gion be­tween June and No­vem­ber, with one hur­ri­cane con­sid­ered the most like­ly sce­nario dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

De­spite the out­look, me­te­o­rol­o­gists warned that the risks re­main sig­nif­i­cant.

At the same time, TTMS is fore­cast­ing hot­ter-than-av­er­age con­di­tions dur­ing the up­com­ing wet sea­son.

Kissoon said there is a 60 per cent chance of warmer-than-nor­mal days, par­tic­u­lar­ly across ur­ban and built-up ar­eas, with tem­per­a­tures like­ly to ex­ceed 34 de­grees Cel­sius in Trinidad and 33 de­grees Cel­sius in To­ba­go dur­ing short-du­ra­tion heat spells be­tween June and Oc­to­ber.

For many com­mu­ni­ties, how­ev­er, flood­ing re­mains the most im­me­di­ate con­cern.

TTMS warned that flood po­ten­tial is ex­pect­ed to be slight­ly to mod­er­ate­ly high across oc­ca­sion­al and emerg­ing flood-prone ar­eas in south­ern Trinidad, while flood risks re­main near nor­mal in tra­di­tion­al­ly vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties across north Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Com­mu­ni­ties such as South Oropouche, Pe­nal, Debe, Bar­rack­pore, Siparia and parts of Princes Town have re­peat­ed­ly ex­pe­ri­enced flood dam­age in re­cent years af­ter heavy rain­fall over­whelmed rivers, drains and road­ways.

Me­te­o­rol­o­gists not­ed that blocked drains, clogged wa­ter­cours­es and ex­pand­ing de­vel­op­ment in flood-prone ar­eas con­tin­ue to in­crease na­tion­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty dur­ing pe­ri­ods of in­tense rain­fall, even when trop­i­cal sys­tems re­main far from lo­cal shores.

Kissoon al­so ref­er­enced Hur­ri­cane Beryl as a re­minder of how rapid­ly weath­er sys­tems in the re­gion can es­ca­late in­to se­ri­ous threats to lives, homes and in­fra­struc­ture.

TTMS act­ing di­rec­tor Sha­keer Baig said the cen­tral mes­sage com­ing out of the fo­rum was pre­pared­ness.

“Pre­pared­ness not on­ly for hur­ri­canes and trop­i­cal storms and their im­pacts, but pre­pared­ness for heat as a re­sult of in­creased tem­per­a­tures, pre­pared­ness for a lack of rain­fall which will im­pact wa­ter man­age­ment,” Baig said.

He added that cit­i­zens should close­ly mon­i­tor of­fi­cial weath­er bul­letins and warn­ing sys­tems such as the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised Com­mon Alert­ing Pro­to­col (CAP) sys­tem, which us­es colour-cod­ed warn­ings rang­ing from yel­low to red de­pend­ing on the sever­i­ty and like­li­hood of haz­ards.

Baig said the agency con­tin­ues work­ing to im­prove how alerts reach vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, in­clud­ing el­der­ly and dif­fer­ent­ly abled cit­i­zens.

“We de­pend heav­i­ly on the main­stream me­dia to get this mes­sage out,” he said, adding that the ser­vice is al­so ex­plor­ing ad­di­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, in­clud­ing so­cial me­dia and What­sApp plat­forms, to ex­pand ac­cess to warn­ings.

Me­te­o­rol­o­gists are al­so mon­i­tor­ing the like­ly de­vel­op­ment of El Niño con­di­tions lat­er this year.

El Niño, a warm­ing of parts of the Pa­cif­ic Ocean, can sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­flu­ence weath­er pat­terns world­wide, in­clud­ing across the Caribbean. In T&T, it is of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with hot­ter tem­per­a­tures, re­duced rain­fall and more er­rat­ic pre­cip­i­ta­tion pat­terns dur­ing the lat­ter half of the wet sea­son.

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist Ean Wal­lace said El Niño could sup­press rain­fall and cloud de­vel­op­ment lo­cal­ly while al­so in­flu­enc­ing trop­i­cal cy­clone ac­tiv­i­ty across the At­lantic basin.

How­ev­er, Wal­lace stressed that even with be­low-nor­mal sea­son­al rain­fall pro­jec­tions, iso­lat­ed heavy rain­fall events could still trig­ger dan­ger­ous flood­ing in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

Mean­while, Baig urged cit­i­zens to use the com­ing weeks to clear drains and wa­ter­cours­es around their homes, pre­pare emer­gency kits, se­cure im­por­tant doc­u­ments and re­view flood readi­ness plans.

“If we are pre­pared, we know how to man­age the var­i­ous el­e­ments of the weath­er,” he said.

“It will con­tribute to­wards sav­ing lives, prop­er­ty and liveli­hoods.”