Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) of­fi­cial­ly de­clared the start of the 2026 dry sea­son yes­ter­day (Jan­u­ary 8), mark­ing a tran­si­tion to dri­er at­mos­pher­ic con­di­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Ean Wal­lace, me­te­o­rol­o­gist 1 at the TTMS, the at­mos­phere has tran­si­tioned fol­low­ing a grad­ual shift from the wet sea­son. The pri­ma­ry dri­ver is the in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion and south­ward mi­gra­tion of the North At­lantic sub­trop­i­cal high-pres­sure cell.

Wal­lace not­ed, how­ev­er, that the first three months of the year will de­vi­ate from the typ­i­cal dry sea­son ex­pec­ta­tions.

“One of the things that we would like our cit­i­zens to take on board is that it will be a wet­ter start,” Wal­lace ex­plained dur­ing an in­ter­view.

“The first half of the sea­son, from Jan­u­ary to March, is ex­pect­ed to be wet­ter than nor­mal.”

While this ini­tial rain­fall will aid in recharg­ing ground­wa­ter and stream flows, Wal­lace warned, “The pub­lic is still strong­ly ad­vised to con­serve and man­age wa­ter sus­tain­ably.”

He not­ed that rain­fall is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to usu­al (low) lev­els by April and May.
Wal­lace al­so ad­dressed a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that the dry sea­son is en­tire­ly rain-free.

He clar­i­fied that the term sim­ply refers to the “dri­est part of the year,” fea­tur­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced rain­fall be­cause trop­i­cal waves and the In­tertrop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone (ITCZ) are no longer ac­tive in the re­gion.

The wet­ter start pro­vides a tem­po­rary re­prieve for nat­ur­al bush­fires, but the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) re­mains vig­i­lant.

Fire Sub-Of­fi­cer Jude Rogers, of the Fire Pre­ven­tion Cen­tral De­part­ment, stat­ed that the moist ground con­di­tions are cur­rent­ly less con­ducive to nat­ur­al fires, yet hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant threat.

“We have chal­lenges with per­sons who may want to have land clear­ing, and for those per­sons who wil­ful­ly raise fires,” Rogers said.

He re­mind­ed the pub­lic that the fire per­mit pe­ri­od is al­ready in ef­fect, run­ning from De­cem­ber 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026.

Rogers warned that light­ing out­door fires with­out a per­mit car­ries a $20,000 fine and six months’ im­pris­on­ment up­on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion. Per­mits cost on­ly $10 and can be ob­tained at lo­cal fire sta­tions af­ter an in­spec­tion by a fire guardian.

To safe­guard homes, Rogers urged cit­i­zens to take proac­tive mea­sures such as cre­at­ing fire traces, clear­ing gut­ters and trim­ming over­hang­ing branch­es.
Health risks are al­so pro­ject­ed to rise.

The “wet­ter start” may in­crease mos­qui­to breed­ing due to wa­ter pool­ing in drains and un­cov­ered stor­age. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, as the sea­son pro­gress­es in­to April, the prob­a­bil­i­ty of Sa­ha­ran dust plumes will in­crease, po­ten­tial­ly re­duc­ing air qual­i­ty across the is­lands.