Thun­der­show­ers yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, which re­sult­ed in flash flood­ing in Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons, were caused by high morn­ing tem­per­a­tures, says Sha­keer Baig, me­te­o­rol­o­gist at the Met Of­fice.In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Baig said: "Max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture got up to 34 de­grees Cel­sius and this amount of heat, cou­pled with the moist and un­sta­ble at­mos­phere, leads to de­vel­op­ment of thun­der­clouds and thun­der­show­ers.

"The heavy show­ers were to­tal­ly lo­calised and were not as­so­ci­at­ed with any weath­er sys­tems or trop­i­cal waves."Baig said he ex­pect­ed the pat­tern of high morn­ing tem­per­a­tures and af­ter­noon thun­der­show­ers in cer­tain ar­eas to con­tin­ue un­til the week­end.

The CEO of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), Dr Stephen Ram­roop, said there was no rea­son to be alarmed at the heavy af­ter­noon down­pour. He said flash flood­ing in the city was due to the block­age of small chan­nels that drain wa­ter from down­town Port-of-Spain."Once we con­tin­ue to lit­ter the streets of Port-of-Spain, flash flood­ing would con­tin­ue. When the drains are blocked, the road turns in­to a riv­er," he said.

Ram­roop added the Wa­ter Re­source Agency, along with the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, was work­ing on a drainage plan for the city.Mean­while, Baig said this year's rainy sea­son was still shap­ing up to be be­low av­er­age."We're ex­pect­ing this trend to con­tin­ue, along with rel­a­tive­ly calm trop­i­cal storm ac­tiv­i­ty," he said.

To com­pound mat­ters, down­town Port-of-Spain was hit with an elec­tri­cal black­out dur­ing the flash flood­ing caus­ing sev­er­al busi­ness­es to shut their doors. The T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion did not re­spond to queries about what caused the black­out.

Pedes­tri­ans ex­it­ing City Gate, the main trans­port hub, were ma­rooned as flood wa­ters trans­formed South Quay to a murky brown lake lit­tered with float­ing de­bris. Mo­torists too stalled as they tried to ven­ture through the flood wa­ters, which av­er­aged about 18 inch­es in some places. Traf­fic in the city be­came chaot­ic as mo­torists tried to find al­ter­na­tive routes.

Both the Mor­vant and Mal­ick Rivers over­flowed block­ing traf­fic along the East­ern Main Road.With­in 30 min­utes the flood wa­ters sub­sided and the sun was back out.