Stay home

The Meteorological Office at Piarco had warned of more heavy rains starting yesterday after the flooding experienced in several areas last Monday and right on time, the rains came with a vengeance just after 4 pm.

It had commuters scampering to get home and escape any possible flooding or being left stranded.

Duty meteorologist Paula Wellington said the heavy showers would occur mostly overnight and should not impact many citizens who were home, unless they were on a Friday night lime on Ariapita Avenue. Wellington suggested that people stay home.

“We are experiencing the foreleg of a tropical wave. Because of the conditions that are associated with this tropical wave we have an unstable atmosphere and a lot of moisture associated with it.

“Because of the heating we observed yesterday it would have caused thermals to build and cause convective activity.

“With the instability and the moisture we are going to have cloudy conditions.

“After the passage of the tropical wave we would have the hind leg of the wave which would give us a lot of cloudy conditions and we may have some showery periods.

“There should be some improvements by midday going into tonight,” Wellington explained.

She said there should be gradual improvement by mid-afternoon.

“Sunday looks good, but we are in the rainy season and we have the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) close by so I would not rule out the isolated shower during Sunday, but it would not be widespread or thunder showers.

“On Monday we are looking at the ITCZ which would re-establish itself after the passing of the wave.

“You cannot predict what the ITCZ would do because it is an entity by itself. Sometimes it would just give us cloudy conditions and other times it would be like what happened last Monday.

“It all depends on the conditions that are around it and influence the type of weather it brings,” she said.

Asked if the country could experience more flooding, Wellington said with thunder showers and thunder storms there can be an intense burst of water and if the infrastructure was not in place to handle it, there could be the kind of flooding as the country experienced last Monday.

“The flooding does not always occur because of the amount of water from the sky it is the infrastructure.

“That is my personal take on that. In Port of Spain, once it is low tide the run off is quick. Street and flash flooding can be anticipated with heavy showers.”

She said with riverine flooding, they needed to get reports from the water resources,but it would take some time for river levels to rise a day or two after after all the tributaries release their water into the source.