Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad

@guardian.co.tt

T&T is fi­nal­ly get­ting some re­lief from the blaz­ing heat.

Last Mon­day, the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) de­clared the start of the an­nu­al wet sea­son af­ter record­ing rain­fall in­di­rect­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone.

It was pre­dict­ed that there would be ‘near-nor­mal’ rain­fall for the du­ra­tion, with con­di­tions ex­pect­ed to be ‘wet as usu­al’ and rain­fall favour­ing East­ern ar­eas of Trinidad.

Wet sea­son to­tals across west­ern ar­eas of both Trinidad and To­ba­go can be as low as 1,000 mil­lime­tres, with east­ern ar­eas po­ten­tial­ly ac­cu­mu­lat­ing greater than 1,800 mil­lime­tres.

How­ev­er, the flood po­ten­tial risk is ex­pect­ed to be high­er than nor­mal across well-known flood-prone ar­eas but ‘nor­mal’ for emerg­ing flood-prone ar­eas.

There may still be some hot days ahead, how­ev­er. While most­ly av­er­age tem­per­a­tures are ex­pect­ed, there is an el­e­vat­ed chance of hot days and short-du­ra­tion hot spells from Au­gust to Oc­to­ber (our sec­ond heat sea­son for the year). Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, a hot spell is ob­served when tem­per­a­tures are greater than or equal to 34 de­grees Cel­sius on five or more con­sec­u­tive days.

At their eigh­teenth Na­tion­al Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum on May 21, the TTMS al­so pre­sent­ed their hur­ri­cane sea­son fore­cast for 2025 for our lo­cal area of in­ter­est.

One to five named storms is the like­ly range, with three storms be­ing the most like­ly num­ber of storms to ex­pect. Of those storms, one is the most like­ly num­ber of hur­ri­canes to de­vel­op. These fig­ures are dif­fer­ent from in­ter­na­tion­al pre­dic­tions be­cause the TTMS on­ly fore­casts for an area where de­vel­op­ing trop­i­cal cy­clones have the po­ten­tial to threat­en T&T and the East­ern Caribbean.

Look­ing at the broad­er pic­ture, the Unit­ed States’ Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion re­leased its hur­ri­cane sea­son fore­cast on May 22. The At­lantic Hur­ri­cane Sea­son, which is con­tained with­in our lo­cal wet sea­son, of­fi­cial­ly be­gins on June 1.

There is a 60 per cent chance of an above-nor­mal sea­son, with 13 to 19 named storms, be­tween six and ten hur­ri­canes, and be­tween three and five ma­jor hur­ri­canes.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the Caribbean In­sti­tute for Me­te­o­rol­o­gy and Hy­drol­o­gy, which is a re­gion­al train­ing cen­tre, has 70 per cent con­fi­dence in their fore­cast of 19 named storms, nine hur­ri­canes, and four ma­jor hur­ri­canes.