Trinidad and To­ba­go tied for the sixth warmest Au­gust on record, with tem­per­a­tures go­ing back 76 years at Pi­ar­co.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) Pre­lim­i­nary Cli­mate Overview, both is­lands ex­pe­ri­enced a warmer than av­er­age Au­gust 2020.

The TTMS record­ed one hot spell be­tween Au­gust 24 and Au­gust 28, where Trinidad record­ed max­i­mum high tem­per­a­tures at or above 34.0°C. How­ev­er, the TTMS not­ed that the month’s high­est record­ed tem­per­a­ture oc­curred on Au­gust 15, out­side of the brief heat­wave.

To­ba­go al­so record­ed sev­er­al hot days, with the max­i­mum high­est tem­per­a­ture record­ed on the is­land at 33.4°C on Au­gust 27. The oth­er hottest day oc­curred on Au­gust 10, with a max­i­mum high of 33.0°C.

When it came to rain­fall, Au­gust 2020 de­liv­ered across both is­lands with rain­fall 68 per cent above av­er­age at Pi­ar­co, Trinidad, and 43 per cent above av­er­age at Crown Point, To­ba­go.

Rain­fall ac­cu­mu­la­tion at Pi­ar­co was the third wettest on record and the wettest Au­gust on record in the last 27 years. Of­fi­cial­ly, 443.9 mil­lime­tres of rain­fall was record­ed dur­ing the month. On­ly Au­gust of 1949 with 464.7 mm and Au­gust of 1993 with 448.8 mm were wet­ter.

At Crown Point, To­ba­go, 263.3 mil­lime­tres of rain­fall made Au­gust 2020 the fourth wettest month in the 50 years of record-keep­ing at the site. It was best­ed on­ly by Au­gust of 2007 with 317.1 mm, 2017 with 276.0 mm, and 1988 with 238.3 mm.

Dur­ing Au­gust, Trinidad record­ed three heavy rain­fall days, de­fined as days where more than (or equal to) 50 mil­lime­tres of rain­fall were record­ed at Pi­ar­co.

The first and heav­i­est oc­curred on Au­gust 7, where 89.3 mil­lime­tres of rain­fall fell across the is­land, trig­ger­ing street, flash, and river­ine flood­ing with sev­er­al mi­nor rivers burst­ing their banks. The Ca­roni Riv­er Basin was placed un­der a River­ine Flood Alert (Yel­low Lev­el) for sev­er­al hours.

The sec­ond heavy rain­fall day oc­curred on Au­gust 17 as back-to-back trop­i­cal waves, and the ITCZ af­fect­ed both Trinidad and To­ba­go with 85.9 mil­lime­tres record­ed at Pi­ar­co and 43.6 mil­lime­tres record­ed at Crown Point, To­ba­go.

The third heavy rain­fall day across Trinidad oc­curred on Au­gust 30, where 59.8 mil­lime­tres of rain­fall was record­ed at Pi­ar­co. Overnight in­to Au­gust 31, strong thun­der­storms moved across Trinidad, pro­duc­ing se­vere flash flood­ing across the East-West Cor­ri­dor, with Arou­ca and Ari­ma the worst af­fect­ed.