A Yel­low Lev­el Ad­verse Weath­er Alert is cur­rent­ly in ef­fect for Trinidad and To­ba­go un­til 4 pm to­day.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS), said yes­ter­day there is a height­ened risk of land­slides and land­slips and ad­di­tion­al im­pacts can in­clude street/flash flood­ing and gusty winds as­so­ci­at­ed with heavy down­pours. This is the re­sult of con­sec­u­tive days of rain­fall as the ground re­mains sat­u­rat­ed in sev­er­al ar­eas.

The TTMS is­sued the Alert yes­ter­day morn­ing for Trinidad/ It went in­to im­me­di­ate ef­fect and then in­clud­ed To­ba­go in an af­ter­noon up­date. The TTMS ad­vised the pub­lic to avoid dri­ving or wad­ing through flood­wa­ters and to mon­i­tor up­dates on the weath­er con­di­tions from of­fi­cial sources.

This weath­er event is due to the pas­sage of a low-lev­el trough over the area, and as­so­ci­at­ed thun­der­storms.

This alert comes af­ter se­vere flash flood­ing in north­west­ern Trinidad on Sat­ur­day, where an in­tense thun­der­storm re­mained near sta­tion­ary over the area. One weath­er sta­tion in Diego Mar­tin record­ed an as­ton­ish­ing 4.67 inch­es (118.6 mm) of rain­fall in just two hours, over­whelm­ing the Diego Mar­tin Riv­er and in­un­dat­ing sur­round­ing ar­eas with sev­er­al feet of wa­ter.

The out­look for the week shows that there is a low to medi­um chance of thun­der­storms each day head­ing in­to the week­end, with Fri­day and Sun­day like­ly to be the wettest days.

Com­put­er mod­els project about three inch­es of rain through Sat­ur­day to end the month on a wet note. Look­ing fur­ther ahead, there seems to be a dry­ing trend dur­ing the first week of De­cem­ber as a high-pres­sure sys­tem be­comes more dom­i­nant. This can re­sult in some breezy con­di­tions and, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the re­turn of oc­ca­sion­al Sa­ha­ran dust plumes. De­cem­ber is usu­al­ly re­gard­ed as a tran­si­tion pe­ri­od from the wet in­to the dry sea­son.