Sun­day, June 1 marked the of­fi­cial start of the 2025 At­lantic Hur­ri­cane Sea­son. The Caribbean re­gion is ex­pect­ed to see an above-av­er­age sea­son, based on fore­casts from rep­utable sources such as the Unit­ed States Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA).

Ac­cord­ing to NOAA’s fore­cast is­sued on May 22, 13 to 19 named storms are like­ly, with six to ten of those be­com­ing hur­ri­canes, in­clud­ing three to five ma­jor hur­ri­canes.

NOAA at­trib­uted the high ac­tiv­i­ty to “warmer than av­er­age ocean tem­per­a­tures, fore­casts for weak wind shear, and the po­ten­tial for high­er ac­tiv­i­ty from the West African Mon­soon, a pri­ma­ry start­ing point for At­lantic hur­ri­canes.”

How­ev­er, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) had on­ly fore­cast for a spe­cialised area of in­ter­est, high­light­ing pos­si­ble threats to T&T and the East­ern Caribbean. With­in this area, the TTMS ex­pect­ed one to five named storms, with one most like­ly in­ten­si­fy­ing to hur­ri­cane strength.

The TTMS al­so stat­ed, “A re­duc­tion in trop­i­cal cy­clone fre­quen­cy is more like­ly in June and Ju­ly. How­ev­er, an in­crease in fre­quen­cy and ac­tiv­i­ty is ex­pect­ed af­ter­wards.”

Aside from hur­ri­cane sea­son, T&T is al­so in the peak of the Sa­ha­ran Dust sea­son (May to June), and long-track At­lantic storms are un­like­ly ear­ly this sea­son.

One no­table im­prove­ment in NOAA’s op­er­a­tions would be the avail­abil­i­ty of trop­i­cal cy­clone ad­vi­so­ry prod­ucts up to 72 hours in ad­vance, a change from the 48-hour mark, in­creas­ing the time for com­mu­ni­ties to pre­pare.

The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) has ramped up its ed­u­ca­tion and pre­pared­ness cam­paigns, urg­ing cit­i­zens to pre­pare for the sea­son ahead.

Some of the key tips in­clude de­vel­op­ing a Fam­i­ly Emer­gency Plan, as­sem­bling an emer­gency kit, se­cur­ing (and main­tain­ing) homes, and stay­ing in­formed by mon­i­tor­ing of­fi­cial up­dates from the TTMS and ODPM. Ad­di­tion­al as­sis­tance can al­so be pro­vid­ed by the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit, all of which have hot­line num­bers.

Cit­i­zens are al­so ad­vised to sign up for the Pub­lic Alert No­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (PANS) on the ODPM’s web­site so that they can re­ceive crit­i­cal mes­sages about dis­as­ters and na­tion­al emer­gen­cies on their phones.