Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Heavy af­ter­noon thun­der­storms moved across Trinidad yes­ter­day evening, caus­ing street and flash flood­ing in some ar­eas and re­sult­ing in traf­fic pile­ups.

Just af­ter mid­day, heavy rain­fall be­gan across south­ern Trinidad, caus­ing the M1 Tasker Road be­tween Princes Town and Irie Vil­lage to be­come im­pass­able, with flood­ing re­port­ed across parts of Princes Town and Pe­nal.

As thun­der­storms moved north­ward, so did fre­quent light­ning, gusty winds and tor­ren­tial rain­fall, which led to flood­ing across parts of Williamsville, Pi­paro and along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way near the Cou­va Over­pass. South­bound lanes of the high­way were in­un­dat­ed, with the off-ramp tem­porar­i­ly im­pass­able to small­er ve­hi­cles, while north­bound lanes had lit­tle wa­ter, still caus­ing some traf­fic con­ges­tion.

In north-cen­tral and north­west­ern Trinidad, the thun­der­storms be­came their most in­tense, dump­ing be­tween 25 and 75 mil­lime­tres of rain­fall across the East-West Cor­ri­dor, from Tu­na­puna to Mt Hope. Sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing af­fect­ed all east­bound lanes of the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way be­tween Or­ange Grove and Trinci­ty, ren­der­ing the high­way im­pass­able. One lane of the west­bound side of the high­way was con­vert­ed in­to an east­bound lane to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic as wa­ters slow­ly sub­sided.

Flood­ing al­so oc­curred in St Au­gus­tine, Pasea, Ma­coya, and Tu­na­puna, and lat­er in the af­ter­noon, brief street flood­ing oc­curred in San­gre Grande and Va­len­cia. Near­ly all flood­wa­ters sub­sided by 5.30 pm, but rush-hour traf­fic head­ing east and south had backed up to Port-of-Spain.

Heavy af­ter­noon thun­der­storms are typ­i­cal dur­ing the Wet Sea­son, par­tic­u­lar­ly on hot days. Yes­ter­day, the max­i­mum high tem­per­a­ture at Pi­ar­co reached 34.5°C. While there were no alerts, watch­es, or warn­ings from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) for the coun­try, they did warn that “gusty winds and street/flash flood­ing can oc­cur in the event of heavy show­ers or thun­der­storms” .

For to­day, the TTMS is fore­cast­ing “part­ly cloudy spells with show­ers in a few ar­eas, with a medi­um (60%) chance of thun­der­storms. The night will be most­ly fair, with the odd show­er”. For to­mor­row, the TTMS has ad­vised, “gusty winds and street/flash flood­ing can oc­cur in the event of heavy show­ers or thun­der­storms”.