Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter­noon thun­der­storms brought chaos across parts of Trinidad yes­ter­day, with sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties be­ing hit by flash flood­ing and com­muters stuck in hours of traf­fic.

The heavy rain­fall, which last­ed as long as three hours in some ar­eas, sent rivers in west­ern Trinidad—in­clud­ing the Mar­aval and Diego Mar­tin rivers—close to spilling their banks.

Flood­wa­ters swamped ma­jor roads, part­ly block­ing sec­tions of the San Fer­nan­do By­pass, the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way and Wright­son Road. Dri­vers were left crawl­ing through traf­fic, with many re­port­ing their usu­al com­mutes tak­ing two and even three times longer.

In the north-west, flood­ing was re­port­ed in Port-of-Spain, Mar­aval, St Ann’s and Diego Mar­tin. Fur­ther south, San Fer­nan­do, Mara­bel­la and Debe al­so saw wa­ter cov­er­ing streets.

Fore­cast­ers say the un­sta­ble weath­er is not over. A trop­i­cal wave is ex­pect­ed to pass over T&T to­day, fol­lowed by the In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone, which will keep con­di­tions ripe for more thun­der­storms through the week. While some breaks of sun­shine are ex­pect­ed from Fri­day in­to the week­end, af­ter­noon show­ers and storms re­main like­ly.

Spring tides linked to Sun­day’s full moon could wors­en the sit­u­a­tion. High­er than nor­mal tides will mean slow­er run-off when show­ers hit dur­ing high tide, in­creas­ing the chance of street flood­ing. While wide­spread riv­er flood­ing is not ex­pect­ed, con­sec­u­tive days of heavy rain could change that.

The Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre is al­so keep­ing an eye on a trop­i­cal wave in the east­ern At­lantic. As of 8 pm yes­ter­day, the sys­tem had a 30 per cent chance of de­vel­op­ment in the next two days and a 70 per cent chance in the next week. Ear­ly fore­casts sug­gest it could strength­en and fol­low a path sim­i­lar to Hur­ri­cane Erin, the pow­er­ful Cat­e­go­ry Five storm that passed north of the Less­er An­tilles in Au­gust.

Res­i­dents across the Caribbean are be­ing urged to keep watch on the sys­tem as it moves west-north­west.