Af­ter months of plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion, the one thing that couldn’t be pre­dict­ed long in ad­vance, the weath­er, has threat­ened to damp­en the To­ba­go Car­ni­val, which en­ters its fi­nale this week­end.

For all the de­bates that have flowed over its or­gan­i­sa­tion, To­ba­go now has the priv­i­lege of be­ing the first Car­ni­val be­ing held in T&T post the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

This week­end, it has earned the right to take cen­tre stage.

The To­ba­go Mu­sic, Arts and Cul­ture (TOMAC) Fes­ti­val held this week in the lead-up to this week­end’s ac­tiv­i­ties was a good start.

The trib­ute to Lord Nel­son fea­tur­ing Kes the Band on Mon­day was a re­sound­ing suc­cess, as thou­sands of pa­trons turned up at the Ply­mouth Recre­ation Ground for a beau­ti­ful blend of mu­sic from two icons of the art form.

And al­though the rains threat­ened to wash out Thurs­day night’s show fea­tur­ing Niger­ian mul­ti-Gram­my Award-win­ning Afro-beats per­former, Bur­na Boy, hun­dreds ig­nored the weath­er to cel­e­brate one of the biggest names in mu­sic com­ing to our shores.

How­ev­er, the pas­sage of a trop­i­cal wave that led to sev­er­al land­slips and flood­ing across the two is­lands, has left Car­ni­val or­gan­is­ers jit­tery.

With over $17 mil­lion spent to put on a show they hope will be­come a sta­ple in To­ba­go’s an­nu­al cal­en­dar of events, the weath­er is threat­en­ing to lit­er­al­ly rain on the is­land’s pa­rade.

Thank­ful­ly, the first of­fi­cial events of this week­end’s Car­ni­val are ones for which rev­ellers will wel­come down­pours.

Hun­dreds will gath­er at Crown Point for the J’ou­vert event be­gin­ning at 4 am to­day, fol­lowed by a Mud Fes­ti­val al­so in Crown Point, events that have tra­di­tion­al­ly proven to be bet­ter when held in the rain.

Be­yond that, the re­main­der of the events re­quire clear skies.

Of­fi­cials, how­ev­er, would be en­cour­aged that the worse ap­pears to be near­ly over, as de­spite some show­ers ex­pect­ed to­day, to­mor­row’s Pa­rade of the Bands is like­ly to take place in fair weath­er.

The is­land de­serves this.

To­ba­go, the coun­try’s recre­ation and re­lax­ation haven, had felt a big­ger blow from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic than Trinidad did, as the is­land’s main eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, tourism, was shut down for a sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­od of time.

Its res­i­dents usu­al­ly ben­e­fit heav­i­ly from a cock­tail of tourist at­trac­tions - the Great Fete Week­end, To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val, Great Race, Her­itage Fes­ti­val and the long East­er week­end among them - when ho­tels are booked, car rentals are max­imised and cash in­flows peak.

This week­end’s Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties of­fer an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for a wind­fall and from ini­tial ap­pear­ances, the num­ber of peo­ple who trav­elled from Trinidad to To­ba­go for it is al­most as big as for some of the more es­tab­lished events.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly must, how­ev­er, care­ful­ly analyse every el­e­ment of this week­end’s cel­e­bra­tions with a view to­ward ex­pand­ing it in­to a ma­jor re­gion­al at­trac­tion and an al­lure to those fur­ther north seek­ing ear­ly respite for the drop­ping tem­per­a­tures.

In this re­gard, we trust that when all is over to­mor­row night, those leav­ing the is­land will be sound am­bas­sadors of a suc­cess­ful To­ba­go Car­ni­val that can grow big­ger as the years go by.