Active tropical wave approaches Southern Windwards

Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

An ac­tive trop­i­cal wave in the cen­tral trop­i­cal At­lantic is ex­pect­ed to be­gin af­fect­ing the South­ern Wind­ward Is­lands from Thurs­day, but the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) says the sys­tem cur­rent­ly has a low chance of de­vel­op­ing in­to a trop­i­cal cy­clone.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, the TTMS said the wave was cen­tred ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,900 kilo­me­tres east of the South­ern Wind­ward Is­lands and was mov­ing west­ward at about 28 kilo­me­tres per hour.

The sys­tem re­mains dis­or­gan­ised, with scat­tered ar­eas of show­ers and thun­der­storms. Ac­cord­ing to the Met Ser­vice, there is cur­rent­ly a 10 per cent (low) chance of trop­i­cal cy­clone de­vel­op­ment dur­ing the next two to sev­en days.

While the wave is ex­pect­ed to ap­proach the south­ern Caribbean lat­er this week, the TTMS stressed that there are cur­rent­ly no trop­i­cal storm or hur­ri­cane watch­es or warn­ings in ef­fect for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The de­vel­op­ment comes as at­ten­tion be­gins to turn to­wards a more ac­tive trop­i­cal At­lantic. In­for­ma­tion from Ac­cuWeath­er and the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre (NHC) in­di­cates that sev­er­al ar­eas are be­ing mon­i­tored, in­clud­ing an­oth­er dis­tur­bance far­ther east in the At­lantic that could en­counter con­di­tions more con­ducive to trop­i­cal de­vel­op­ment lat­er this week.

How­ev­er, the even­tu­al strength and track of these sys­tems re­main un­cer­tain. At­mos­pher­ic con­di­tions, in­clud­ing wind shear and Sa­ha­ran Dust con­cen­tra­tions, will play an im­por­tant role in de­ter­min­ing whether dis­tur­bances ap­proach­ing the Less­er An­tilles are able to or­gan­ise and strength­en.

For Trinidad and To­ba­go, the im­me­di­ate fo­cus re­mains on the trop­i­cal wave iden­ti­fied by the TTMS. A low prob­a­bil­i­ty of trop­i­cal cy­clone for­ma­tion does not mean an ab­sence of weath­er im­pacts, as trop­i­cal waves can still pro­duce pe­ri­ods of in­creased cloudi­ness, show­ers, thun­der­storms and gusty winds as they move through the re­gion.

The Met Ser­vice is ex­pect­ed to is­sue its next of­fi­cial up­date at 2 pm on Tues­day, or ear­li­er if there are sig­nif­i­cant changes to the fore­cast.