Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty says reser­voir lev­els re­main well be­low long-term av­er­ages two weeks af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice de­clared the start of the 2024 Wet Sea­son.

In an up­date yes­ter­day, based on da­ta tak­en the Ca­roni Reser­voir re­mained the low­est at 23.03 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, com­pared to the 54.1 per cent long-term av­er­age for this time of year.

Navet Reser­voir is the sec­ond low­est, at 27.41 per cent, com­pared to the 46.54 per cent long-term av­er­age. Hol­lis Reser­voir is the third low­est, with a cur­rent ca­pac­i­ty of 33.78 per cent, com­pared to a long-term av­er­age of 42.45 per cent.

Hills­bor­ough Reser­voir, lo­cat­ed in To­ba­go, is the small­est of T&T’s four ma­jor reser­voirs and cur­rent­ly has a ca­pac­i­ty of 37.2 per cent, com­pared to a long-term av­er­age of 58.5 per cent.

Over the past two weeks, rain­fall has re­mained sparse across T&T. The four trop­i­cal waves that have moved over the is­lands to date have pro­duced lit­tle rain­fall across the reser­voir catch­ment ar­eas.

It would take per­sis­tent, heavy rain­fall to re­plen­ish reser­voirs to their long-term av­er­ages. From this evening, back-to-back trop­i­cal waves are fore­cast to bring ben­e­fi­cial rain to the coun­try through Tues­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice’s cli­mate out­look is­sued last month, “June-Ju­ly-Au­gust is most like­ly to be wet as usu­al with some pock­ets of wet­ter-than-usu­al ar­eas, es­pe­cial­ly in west­ern Trinidad and most of To­ba­go, while the rest of the sea­son is like­ly to be wet as usu­al. The po­ten­tial for flood­ing is high.”

The Met Of­fice added, “The June 2024 rain­fall out­look in­di­cates that there are en­hanced chances for usu­al to wet­ter than usu­al con­di­tions to oc­cur across Trinidad and To­ba­go.”