Over the past 12 hours, at­mos­pher­ic con­di­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go have re­mained rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble, aid­ed by the pres­ence of Sa­ha­ran dust, ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TT Met Of­fice).

This sta­bil­i­ty has lim­it­ed ad­di­tion­al rain­fall across both is­lands, al­low­ing some runoff process­es to take place. How­ev­er, riv­er lev­els re­main a con­cern.

The TT Met Of­fice re­port­ed that “some rivers re­main at or near crit­i­cal lev­el, name­ly the Ca­roni Riv­er at El Car­men, which has breached on­to the banks of the riv­er.” While fur­ther ex­ten­sive river­ine flood­ing is not an­tic­i­pat­ed at this time, the sit­u­a­tion is be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored.

Runoff from ear­li­er rain­fall is be­lieved to have al­ready reached the main wa­ter­cours­es, and riv­er lev­els are ex­pect­ed to grad­u­al­ly re­cede af­ter high tide. Still, the Met Of­fice cau­tions that “slow runoff may main­tain lo­cal­ized pond­ing in low-ly­ing or poor­ly drained ar­eas for some time.”

While ad­di­tion­al rain­fall is ex­pect­ed lat­er to­day, its in­ten­si­ty and du­ra­tion are not fore­cast­ed to be as sig­nif­i­cant as pre­vi­ous events.

Nev­er­the­less, the Met Of­fice warns that “with the close prox­im­i­ty of the ITCZ, there is enough mois­ture and in­sta­bil­i­ty to cause iso­lat­ed street/flash flood­ing,” and there­fore ad­vis­es con­tin­ued cau­tion.

Res­i­dents—es­pe­cial­ly those in ar­eas sur­round­ing the Ca­roni Riv­er—are urged to re­main vig­i­lant, mon­i­tor lo­cal weath­er con­di­tions, and ex­er­cise cau­tion. The TT Met Of­fice em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of avoid­ing flood­ed ar­eas, stat­ing: “As­sess your sur­round­ings be­fore ven­tur­ing out and avoid dri­ving or wad­ing through flood wa­ters. Take nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to mit­i­gate po­ten­tial im­pacts. Fol­low the in­struc­tions of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.”

High tide is ex­pect­ed at 7:58 a.m. and again at 9:39 p.m. on Mon­day, May 19th, which may tem­porar­i­ly slow runoff.