Kalain Ho­sein

Metorol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

More in­clement weath­er is fore­cast for Trinidad and To­ba­go through Wednes­day as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) places the coun­try un­der a Lo­calised Flood Alert (Yel­low Lev­el), re­plac­ing an er­ro­neous­ly is­sued Ad­verse Weath­er Alert from Mon­day night, which orig­i­nat­ed from the TTMS and was dis­trib­uted by the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s Com­mon Alert­ing Pro­to­col to in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, the Alert retroac­tive­ly went ef­fect at 10:30 AM Tues­day, No­vem­ber 7th, 2023, and re­mains in ef­fect un­til 3:00 PM Wednes­day, No­vem­ber 8th, 2023, for both Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In the Alert, they state, “Mois­ture and low-lev­el in­sta­bil­i­ty will con­tin­ue to pro­duce pre­cip­i­ta­tion across Trinidad and ac­tiv­i­ty will in­crease over To­ba­go. This ac­tiv­i­ty will ex­ac­er­bate con­di­tions al­ready un­der­wa­ter. Con­di­tions will im­prove lat­er to­day but overnight rain­fall will add to the ac­cu­mu­la­tion. At this time, all ma­jor rivers are con­tained, but small­er wa­ter cours­es are quick­ly reach­ing their hold­ing ca­pac­i­ty. Street and flash flood­ing can be ex­pect­ed in ar­eas un­der heavy show­ers and thun­der­storms. Lo­calised flood­ing and pond­ing are ex­pect­ed in ar­eas that are al­ready sat­u­rat­ed. Land­slips and land­slides are pos­si­ble favour­ing To­ba­go.”

For a yel­low-lev­el, mod­er­ate alert, there is the po­ten­tial for pos­si­ble in­juries, where be­hav­ioral changes are re­quired to en­sure safe­ty. There may be mi­nor dam­age to prop­er­ty, with in­come-earn­ing tem­porar­i­ly dis­rupt­ed and a cou­ple of com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed.

The TTMS is ad­vis­ing the pub­lic to mon­i­tor weath­er con­di­tions and riv­er/wa­ter lev­els. Mon­i­tor up­dates from of­fi­cial sources and plan safe­ty mea­sures and do not take un­nec­es­sary risks. Avoid dri­ving or wad­ing through flood wa­ters. Fol­low the in­struc­tions of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.