Geisha Kow­lessar

State-owned Petrotrin stocked up on emer­gency sup­plies yes­ter­day as the next At­lantic Trop­i­cal de­pres­sion, ex­pect­ed to be named Matthew, churned to­wards the Wind­ward Is­lands.

A source said Petrotrin of­fi­cials were in the process of putting in place an emer­gency con­tin­gency plan in the event that the weath­er con­di­tions took a turn for the worse.

Up to press time (6 pm) the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter in Mi­a­mi said the trop­i­cal dis­tur­bance is lo­cat­ed over 900 miles east-south­east of the Wind­ward Is­lands.

In­ter­na­tion­al weath­er re­ports said show­ers and gusty winds were ex­pect­ed in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Grena­da, Trinidad and To­ba­go and per­haps even coastal Venezuela lat­er this week.

But while the State-owned com­pa­ny was putting things in place for the im­pend­ing storm, chief me­te­o­rol­o­gist at the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (Met Of­fice) Sha­keer Baig, and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) Dr Stephen Ram­roop said there is no storm head­ing for this coun­try.

Gas sta­tions did not have any un­usu­al lines yes­ter­day.

Baig said the Met Of­fice was cur­rent­ly mon­i­tor­ing a trop­i­cal wave with an as­so­ci­at­ed area of low pres­sure which was now lo­cat­ed 1,800 kilo­me­tres east south­east of the Wind­ward Is­lands.

And the area of bad weath­er, he said, was ex­pect­ed to be east of T&T.

The coun­try was al­so ex­pect­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence heavy show­ers by to­mor­row (Wednes­day).

"Whether it de­vel­ops fur­ther or not by Wednes­day morn­ing through­out the day and prob­a­bly in­to the night on Wednes­day the en­tire south­ern Caribbean area will ex­pe­ri­ence show­ers, some of which will be heavy and there will be an ac­com­pa­ny­ing area of gusty winds.

"But at this time T&T is not un­der any trop­i­cal storm threat or warn­ing," Baig said.

Mean­while, the ODPM is ad­vis­ing peo­ple to re­main vig­i­lant and prac­tice the nor­mal pre­cau­tion­ary 72-hour pro­to­col of prepa­ra­tion by keep­ing emer­gency kits and sup­plies read­i­ly avail­able.

But it al­so main­tained that the coun­try was not un­der any storm threat or warn­ing at this time.