Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad

@guardian.co.tt

It was an­oth­er dusty day for T&T yes­ter­day as a thick plume of Sa­ha­ran dust, an un­wel­come vis­i­tor from across the At­lantic, en­veloped the na­tion, prompt­ing the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) to is­sue a press re­lease warn­ing of “un­healthy” air qual­i­ty.

At that lev­el, the air pos­es health risks to every­one, es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble groups, such as chil­dren, old­er adults, and peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry or heart con­di­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the EMA, T&T cur­rent­ly has six am­bi­ent air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing sta­tions (five in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go) which pro­vide re­al-time da­ta. How­ev­er, da­ta from on­ly three of these sta­tions are avail­able on­line—Port-of-Spain, Point Lisas and San Fer­nan­do.

There was some re­lief for Trinidad as of 8 pm yes­ter­day, as the air qual­i­ty im­proved to a “mod­er­ate” lev­el, with the clouds of dust giv­ing way to mois­ture from a trop­i­cal wave that ap­proached the re­gion.

Yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) is­sued a Yel­low Lev­el Ad­verse Weath­er Alert for T&T, which came in­to ef­fect at 2 am to­day.

The TTMS’ fore­cast is for a medi­um (60 per cent) chance of iso­lat­ed thun­der­storms, with the most im­pact­ful weath­er favour­ing south­ern and east­ern off­shore ar­eas. It ad­vised of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of gusty winds and heavy down­pours, which could al­so ag­i­tate seas.

Oth­er im­pacts in­clude tem­po­rary traf­fic dis­rup­tions, street flood­ing and lo­calised pond­ing.

The TTMS said mo­torists and res­i­dents in flood-prone ar­eas should ex­er­cise cau­tion and take nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions.

The rel­a­tive­ly wet con­di­tions are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue for the ma­jor­i­ty of the week as the In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ) is ex­pect­ed to trail the trop­i­cal wave.

Sea con­di­tions are al­so ex­pect­ed to re­main mod­er­ate to rough (waves near 2.5 me­tres) due to oc­ca­sion­al­ly strong low-lev­el winds over the area.

These cur­rent strong winds (lead­ing to more wind shear) and Sa­ha­ran dust are among the fac­tors for the slow start to the At­lantic hur­ri­cane sea­son.

Mean­while, the East­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean basin is al­ready on its third named storm of the sea­son, with Alvin form­ing late last month and Bar­bara and Cosme cur­rent­ly ac­tive near the Mex­i­can West Coast.