A hur­ri­cane hunter air­craft has been sent to in­ves­ti­gate a trop­i­cal wave east of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and has found no fur­ther de­vel­op­ment to cat­e­gorise it as a Trop­i­cal De­pres­sion.

With strength­en­ing, a sys­tem is up­grad­ed from a Trop­i­cal Wave to a Trop­i­cal De­pres­sion, then to a Trop­i­cal Storm and then to a Hur­ri­cane.

The Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre (NHC) said the air­craft found ev­i­dence of a sharp sur­face trough but con­firmed that a well-de­fined cir­cu­la­tion has not formed.

It said that al­though the sys­tem is cur­rent­ly dis­or­ga­nized, at least grad­ual de­vel­op­ment is an­tic­i­pat­ed and a trop­i­cal de­pres­sion could form lat­er this week­end or ear­ly next week.

The wave is fore­cast to move quick­ly west­ward for the next day or two.

The NHC said that re­gard­less of de­vel­op­ment, heavy rain­fall and gusty winds are pos­si­ble over much of the Less­er An­tilles over the week­end.

It has giv­en the sys­tem a 50 per cent chance of fur­ther de­vel­op­ment in the next 48 hours.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is still not in the clear, how­ev­er.

Ear­li­er to­day the Met Of­fice raised the alert lev­el from yel­low to or­ange.

It said that pe­ri­ods of heavy to in­tense show­ers and/or thun­der­storms are like­ly.

It added that heavy/in­tense down­pours are ex­pect­ed to re­sult in street/flash flood­ing.

Gusty winds in ex­cess of 65 km/hr can be ex­pect­ed and the risk of land­slides/land­slips is very high in ar­eas so prone.

Sea con­di­tions are al­so like­ly to be­come oc­ca­sion­al­ly rough.

It has sug­gest­ed that ad­e­quate prepa­ra­tions be made to safe­guard life and prop­er­ty.

It says that peo­ple who live in ar­eas that are sus­cep­ti­ble to flood­ing, es­pe­cial­ly ar­eas along the main riv­er cours­es and trib­u­taries, should be pre­pared and cre­ate a safe­ty plan in case of emer­gency.

Mean­while, an­oth­er trop­i­cal wave is ex­pect­ed to move off the west coast of Africa by Sun­day and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions are ex­pect­ed to be con­ducive for de­vel­op­ment, and a trop­i­cal de­pres­sion or trop­i­cal storm is like­ly to form ear­ly next week while the wave moves west­ward across the east­ern trop­i­cal At­lantic.

This sys­tem has a high 90 per cent chance of de­vel­op­ment with­in the next five days.