The anticipated destruction that many in T&T were bracing for due to the passage of Hurricane Beryl did not materialise as the storm veered northwest.
As it moved up the Windward Island early Monday, Tobago was spared a direct hit and Trinidad saw very little effects from the weather system.
It is believed that the country’s geographic placement in the Southernmost Caribbean would have spared the island and its population.
Citizens in Trinidad and Tobago have long held on to the belief that God is a Trini.
On Monday, CNC3 News weather anchor Kalain Hosein explained why Beryl turned slightly north, away from the country.
He explained in the tropics, where hurricanes form in the Atlantic basin, there are easterly winds called trade winds that generally steer tropical systems.
“So, anything from a tropical wave, tropical depression, tropical storm or a powerful hurricane moves towards the West.”
The trade winds generally carry these systems from the west coast of Africa to sometimes the Caribbean Sea, and he said, “ultimately either towards North American coastlines or into the North Atlantic Ocean.”
In the Atlantic basin, Hosein said, there is a semi-persistent high-pressure system in the North Atlantic Ocean.
It is often referred to as Bermuda High or a subtropical ridge that dominates conditions in the North Atlantic Ocean.
“Hurricanes and tropical systems in the Atlantic basin move around the periphery of this ridge.”
Hosein said to imagine this ridge as a big oval-shaped clock, as the winds move clockwise.
In the case of Hurricane Beryl, Hosein said, it kept the storm on a westward path.
“But as it (Hurricane Beryl) neared Trinidad and Tobago and the Windward Islands, it rapidly intensified. When we have a rapidly intensifying storm, or a tropical storm or hurricane, in addition to that steering flow from the south tropical ridge, the hurricane develops something called a beta drift.”
Beta drift is air moving northward on the eastern side of a hurricane that acquires a clockwise spin versus air on the southward side of the storm that develops a counterclockwise spin.
According to Hosein, this phenomenon occurs due to another force—the Coriolis Force—that is responsible for giving a tropical storm or hurricane its spin.
He explained that while the beta drift is a complex topic, it involves the hurricane’s ability to modify the environmental wind field, adding, “A stronger storm has a stronger beta drift.”
He continued, “That is why we tend to see, once systems get close to the country and strengthen, they tend to move west-northwest to west, essentially curving away from Trinidad and Tobago.”
He said, “Quite often when we have a system that is nearing the Lesser Antilles, we will hear that a weaker storm will move further west, and a stronger storm will curve further north, which will affect our neighbours essentially, and not come directly towards Trinidad and Tobago and the Windward Islands.”
Hosein said other features can also influence a storm’s movement.
“Generally, it depends on the strength of the storm, the beta drift of the cyclone, and the strength of the sub-tropical ridge which exists semi-permanently in the North Atlantic.”
He added that explanation is generally applicable for storms that form within the deep tropics, the “Main Development Region” of the Atlantic basin, which is east of T&T to the west coast of Africa, with other features affecting the track for storms in the far western Caribbean, and near the United States.