Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

Tor­ren­tial af­ter­noon rain ren­dered roads im­pass­able in Clax­ton Bay yes­ter­day, leav­ing sev­er­al mo­torists strand­ed and the com­mu­ni­ty strug­gling with flash flood­ing.

The down­pour be­gan late in the morn­ing, short­ly af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) is­sued a Yel­low Lev­el Weath­er Alert at 9.54 am, which took ef­fect at 11 am.

With­in hours, streets like Cedar Hill Road and Spring Vale Road were un­der wa­ter and com­plete­ly im­pass­able.

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) con­firmed that flood­ing stretched be­yond Clax­ton Bay, with re­ports com­ing in from Tor­tu­ga Vil­lage and north­ern parts of Gas­par­il­lo as well.

The rain be­gan to ease up around 2 pm, and most of the flood­wa­ters sub­sided with­in two hours. Still, the ODPM not­ed that wa­ter­course lev­els re­mained dan­ger­ous­ly high.

Coun­cil­lor Shazee­da Khan-Mo­hammed told Guardian Me­dia that as­sess­ments were car­ried out with the lo­cal Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit once the wa­ter be­gan to re­cede.

Else­where, scat­tered thun­der­storms af­fect­ed the north­ern and east­ern parts of Trinidad, but no ma­jor flood­ing was re­port­ed. The TTMS lift­ed the alert at 5.32 pm. These af­ter­noon thun­der­storms are com­mon dur­ing the Wet Sea­son, and are es­pe­cial­ly preva­lent lat­er in the year. Yes­ter­day’s sys­tem was fu­elled by a trop­i­cal wave pass­ing through the Less­er An­tilles, com­bined with hot day­time con­di­tions.

More un­sta­ble weath­er is ex­pect­ed to­day, with show­ers de­vel­op­ing dur­ing the morn­ing and thun­der­storms like­ly in­to the af­ter­noon. The pub­lic is ad­vised to pre­pare for pos­si­ble street and flash flood­ing. Two more trop­i­cal waves are al­so on their way across the At­lantic and could af­fect T&T next week.

The ODPM is re­mind­ing peo­ple not to dri­ve through flood­wa­ters and to stay alert, es­pe­cial­ly in land­slide and flood-prone ar­eas. The Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment is al­so urg­ing any­one af­fect­ed to reach out to their lo­cal Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit hot­line.