Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Iso­lat­ed af­ter­noon thun­der­storms fol­low­ing the pas­sage of a weak low-lev­el trough over T&T re­sult­ed in heavy rain­fall and flood­ing across the cap­i­tal yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

The wa­ters rose in the usu­al flood-prone ar­eas of low­er and east­ern Port-of-Spain, in­clud­ing the East­ern Main Road in the vicin­i­ty of Suc­cess Laven­tille Sec­ondary School, South Quay and City Gate, as well as Char­lotte Street, Aber­crom­by Street, St Vin­cent Street, Ed­ward Street, and Rich­mond Street. The wa­ters quick­ly sub­sided once the rains end­ed.

Heavy rain­fall al­so af­fect­ed parts of Mar­aval and Diego Mar­tin, where street flood­ing was al­so re­port­ed along var­i­ous ar­eas of Sad­dle Road.

Fur­ther east, flood­wa­ters al­so briefly cov­ered parts of the east­bound lanes of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way near Pasea.

While the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) did not is­sue a for­mal weath­er or flood alert, the fore­cast for yes­ter­day did state, “Gusty winds and street/flash flood­ing can oc­cur in the event of heavy show­ers or thun­der­storms.”

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, “The re­cent pas­sage of trop­i­cal waves has been mod­u­lat­ing some (In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone) ITCZ mois­ture across Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Wind­ward Is­lands, but mod­er­ate to strong mid-lev­el winds to­geth­er with a gen­er­al­ly damp­en­ing air­flow in the up­per at­mos­phere have helped to re­duce the ex­tent of thun­der­storm de­vel­op­ment across Trinidad and To­ba­go, so far, al­though iso­lat­ed thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty and heavy show­ers have been ob­served in some ar­eas. “The strong pull by an area of low pres­sure to­wards the north cre­at­ed stronger sur­face con­ver­gences to the north and east of Trinidad and To­ba­go and there­fore al­low­ing for clus­ters of thun­der­storm ac­tiv­i­ty main­ly in those ar­eas.”

The Met Of­fice said that for the re­main­der of this week, par­tic­u­lar­ly from to­mor­row, a ridge of high pres­sure was fore­cast to es­tab­lish it­self across the Less­er An­tilles. Most­ly fair­er weath­er is ex­pect­ed across the north­ern Wind­ward and the Lee­ward Is­lands for the re­main­der of this out­look pe­ri­od.