Kalain Ho­sein

Heavy show­ers and thun­der­storms led to flood­ing in sev­er­al parts of south­ern, cen­tral and north­west­ern Trinidad on Tues­day.

Start­ing in South, sig­nif­i­cant street and flash flood­ing was re­port­ed along Pa­pourie Road, near the Bar­rack­pore East and West Sec­ondary Schools. Wa­ter lev­els rose be­tween two and three feet, ren­der­ing the road­way im­pass­able for small­er ve­hi­cles through Tues­day af­ter­noon.

Per­sis­tent rain­fall af­fect­ed parts of cen­tral Trinidad, from Clax­ton Bay to Chase Vil­lage, from late morn­ing through ear­ly af­ter­noon.

Flood­ing was re­port­ed along Cedar Hill Road in Clax­ton Bay, which be­came im­pass­able for small­er ve­hi­cles.

Fur­ther north, flood­ing was re­port­ed in Bal­main, Cou­va, St Mary’s, Freeport, Chick­land, Cal­cut­ta #1, #2, #3 and #4, Car­li Bay, Wa­ter­loo, McBean and en­vi­rons, as sev­er­al small­er drains and streams were over­whelmed by the tor­ren­tial rain­fall.

Flood­ing and fall­en trees were al­so re­port­ed along in­te­ri­or ar­eas of Cen­tral Trinidad, near Bras­so Ve­na­do.

All south­bound lanes of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, near Courts, Freeport, were al­so im­pact­ed by flood­ing through the af­ter­noon, caus­ing a traf­fic pile­up for com­muters head­ing south.

While ear­ly morn­ing show­ers caused street flood­ing fur­ther east in Arou­ca on the East­ern Main Road, most of the flood re­ports oc­curred af­ter mid­day across Port-of-Spain.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, heavy show­ers and thun­der­storms led to flood­ing in many ar­eas of low­er Port-of-Spain, with street flood­ing re­port­ed across the cap­i­tal.

High flood wa­ters pre­vent­ed mo­torists from tra­vers­ing South Quay and parts of Wright­son Road on Tues­day af­ter­noon.

The Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment stat­ed on so­cial me­dia that flash flood­ing was tak­ing place at South Quay and George Street, Port-of-Spain, and ad­vised the pop­u­la­tion of pos­si­ble in­creased traf­fic in sur­round­ing ar­eas.

Ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment, land­slides oc­curred at St Ann’s Road be­tween Ari­api­ta Road and Plai­sance Road, Port-of-Spain; Fondes Aman­des Road, St Ann’s; Laven­tille Road, Laven­tille; and Up­per Coun­cil­man Gar­dens, Mal­ick, Barataria. A fall­en tree at La Canoa Road al­so dam­aged a house. Flood­ing was re­port­ed in Bel­mont, Laven­tille, along the East­ern Main Road and the Sad­dle Road in Mar­aval. The Mar­aval Riv­er, East Dry (Riv­er St Ann’s) and Diego Mar­tin Riv­er were all el­e­vat­ed but re­mained with­in their banks yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

While there were no alerts, watch­es, or warn­ings in ef­fect from the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS), their of­fi­cial fore­cast Tues­day morn­ing warned of gusty winds and street flood­ing in the event of heavy show­ers or thun­der­storms.

The Met Of­fice is al­so mon­i­tor­ing an ap­proach­ing trop­i­cal wave.

In a so­cial me­dia post, the of­fice said, “The next trop­i­cal wave is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1220 kilo­me­tres to the east of the Less­er An­tilles. The ax­is of this wave is fore­cast to reach the is­lands on Wednes­day morn­ing. At this time, most of the mois­ture as­so­ci­at­ed with this wave is ex­pect­ed to pass north of Trinidad and To­ba­go. How­ev­er, we can still ex­pect part­ly cloudy to cloudy con­di­tions at times and a medi­um chance of thun­der­storms in a few ar­eas.”