Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Amidst heavy rain­fall overnight last night in­to this morn­ing, the TTMS is­sued an Ad­verse Weath­er Alert (Yel­low Lev­el) at 6:14 AM to­day due to, “Fore­cast rain­fall this morn­ing, com­bined with ac­cu­mu­la­tions over the past sev­er­al hours, sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creas­es the risk of lo­cal­ized flood­ing and land­slides.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, flood­ing has been re­port­ed at Abat­toir Road, Port of Spain, as well as South Quay in the vicin­i­ty of City Gate at 6:00 AM.

The alert, which went in­to ef­fect at 6:20 AM re­mains in ef­fect un­til 2:00 PM to­day for both is­lands, al­so warns of stronger winds. The Met Of­fice ex­plained, “Ad­di­tion­al­ly, mod­er­ate to strong winds in the low­er at­mos­phere may cause gusts near 55 kph in the vicin­i­ty of heavy down­pours which can lead to falling de­bris or dis­place roofs and ag­i­tat­ed seas.”

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 avoid ven­tur­ing in­to flood wa­ters, se­cure loose out­door ob­jects and mariners should ex­er­cise added cau­tion. They add that the pub­lic should mon­i­tor of­fi­cial up­dates.

The Met Of­fice’s fore­cast for to­day calls for, “Cloudy con­di­tions with oc­ca­sion­al light or mod­er­ate show­ers/ rain over some ar­eas, main­ly dur­ing the morn­ing. There is a 40-60% (medi­um) chance of heavy show­ers or the iso­lat­ed thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty. Con­di­tions ex­pect­ed to grad­u­al­ly set­tle by evening in­to night de­spite few lin­ger­ing show­ery spells. Gusty winds and street/ flash flood­ing can oc­cur in the event of heavy show­ers or thun­der­storms.”

This ac­tiv­i­ty, based on the TTMS, is due to the In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ) in­ter­act­ing with the pas­sage of a trop­i­cal wave to­day. The ITCZ is an area where trade winds meet in the At­lantic Ocean, lead­ing to a band of cloudi­ness, show­ers and thun­der­storms.