Flood alert issued for southern and eastern Trinidad as more rain expected

If you're in south­ern or east­ern Trinidad, you may want to keep an eye on the weath­er.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) has is­sued a Yel­low Lev­el Lo­calised Flood Alert from 5:00 am to 4:00 pm on Mon­day, Ju­ly 13, warn­ing that more rain could trig­ger flood­ing in some com­mu­ni­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, the pres­ence of the In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ), com­bined with al­ready sat­u­rat­ed soils from ear­li­er rain­fall, has in­creased the risk of lo­calised flood­ing.

Fore­cast­ers say it won't take much ad­di­tion­al rain for streams and small­er wa­ter­cours­es to over­flow. That means low-ly­ing and flood-prone ar­eas could ex­pe­ri­ence lo­calised flood­ing and pond­ing, while wa­ter on roads may slow traf­fic and cre­ate haz­ardous dri­ving con­di­tions. There is al­so a risk of land­slips in ar­eas that are prone to them.

Res­i­dents are en­cour­aged to stay alert, es­pe­cial­ly if they live near rivers, streams or flood-prone lo­ca­tions. If you're head­ing out, al­low ex­tra trav­el time and avoid dri­ving through flood­ed roads, as it's of­ten dif­fi­cult to judge the depth of the wa­ter.

The TTMS is con­tin­u­ing to mon­i­tor con­di­tions and is urg­ing the pub­lic to fol­low of­fi­cial weath­er up­dates through­out the day.