The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) has de­clared the start of the 2025 Dry Sea­son. In an of­fi­cial state­ment yes­ter­day, the TTMS said that the po­si­tion­ing and lo­ca­tion of sev­er­al large (syn­op­tic) scale at­mos­pher­ic fea­tures char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Dry Sea­son have been ob­served.

What will the weath­er be like?

With the re­cent­ly de­clared La Ni­na phase (by the US Cli­mate Pre­dic­tion Cen­ter), T&T can ex­pect "nor­mal" to "above nor­mal" rain­fall to­tals for Jan­u­ary to March. Both Trinidad and To­ba­go have sur­passed "ex­pect­ed" to­tals for the month, with a wet start to Jan­u­ary. The strength of the La Ni­na is ex­pect­ed to de­crease in April and May which can re­sult in "nor­mal" con­di­tions for those months. April is usu­al­ly the third dri­est month of the year, and the end of May is usu­al­ly a tran­si­tion back in­to the Wet Sea­son. The TTMS’ out­look al­so in­di­cates that ‘warmer than usu­al’ tem­per­a­tures are like­ly for the pe­ri­od, but in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, there may be a few cool­er-than-nor­mal nights (which we have al­ready ob­served this week).

For Jan­u­ary to March, the mar­gin­al­ly wet­ter than nor­mal con­di­tions will like­ly re­duce veg­e­ta­tive stress, have a pos­i­tive im­pact on sur­face and ground­wa­ter sys­tems, and de­crease the po­ten­tial for wild­fires. The in­creased rain­fall can al­so re­sult in an in­crease in breed­ing ar­eas for in­sect vec­tors such as mos­qui­toes. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, April and May will see an in­creased prob­a­bil­i­ty of Sa­ha­ran dust events and an in­creased po­ten­tial for wild­fires, both of which can lead to a de­crease in air qual­i­ty.

State of reser­voirs

Da­ta from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) on Jan­u­ary 14 shows the Hills­bor­ough, Hol­lis and Navet reser­voirs near ca­pac­i­ty at 99.5%, 97.87% and 94.14% re­spec­tive­ly. These fa­cil­i­ties are near or above their long-term av­er­age (where we ex­pect them to be). How­ev­er, the Are­na reser­voir is at 79.16%, well be­low its long-term av­er­age of 93%. The Are­na Reser­voir is al­so the largest of all the reser­voirs, so this deficit is sig­nif­i­cant.

In a re­lease, WASA stat­ed that it “will height­en wa­ter sup­ply man­age­ment ac­tiv­i­ty in ac­cor­dance with our Dry Sea­son Wa­ter Man­age­ment Plan.” El­e­ments of the plan in­clude a spe­cialised pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign, mon­i­tor­ing and man­age­ment of wa­ter re­sources, in­fra­struc­ture main­te­nance and up­grades, and emer­gency re­sponse. WASA is al­so en­cour­ag­ing the pop­u­la­tion to “take proac­tive steps in con­serv­ing wa­ter and man­ag­ing re­sources wise­ly.”