In the line of a storm

The rains the previous day and night kept press photographers busy going from one flood scene to the next, the landslides and consequent tragedy on the North Coast Road were headline news on radio and TV and filled the front pages of the next day’s daily press.

The media turned out in force at the San Fernando Room of the Crowne Plaza for the briefing — and the comprehensive briefing with Power Point presentations on precisely what the Met Service means when it forecasts fine/dry/ clear/sunny/cloudy/overcast weather, the distribution of showers and their intensity.

Indeed the Met Service left no stone unturned, neglected not one explanation or exact definition of the words the Service uses when issuing weather forecasts. The presentation was indeed an education in weather lore for the media, including a CD ROM of the presentation as well as printed lists of clear, simple explanations of words and terms used by meteorologists.

The media tucked all this information away for reference, or perhaps immediate use, in view of the continuing presence over Trinidad of the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) — the variable area, we learned, where the North East Trade Winds meet the South East Trade Winds producing the showers that caused that day’s flooding.

It was Meteorological Services Director Emmanuel Mulchand, who warned us that we could be in the hurricane, or at least tropical storm firing line in 2006. He reminded us that a hurricane devastated coconut plantations in the south in the 1930s, in the 60s Hurricane Flora wreaked havoc in Tobago — and lashed the North Coast of Trinidad — and in August 1974 Tropical Storm Alma brought down huge trees and wrecked (among other things) the Central Library on Queen’s Park East.

Give or take a year or three, hurricanes and/or tropical storms batter Trinidad every quarter century. In fact we are overdue for a next battering. It could be this year (but it may not). Only God, Who, despite our claims to the contrary, isn’t a Trini — according to Public Utilities Minister Pennelope Beckles, He spares us because he loves Trinidad — He loves us . . . but perhaps we need a short sharp lesson from time to time?

Mulchand’s warning is not to be ignored. The season has started with just one named storm, Alberto, in the west of the Caribbean. However, most hurricanes occur in late July/early August — maybe in to September, there’s usually a lull during the Petit Careme, until November when hurricanes threaten the islands and the Gulf Coast of Mexico again.

It was with the possibility of a tropical storm, if not a hurricane hitting TT, and the continuing showers of the ICTZ that the Ministry and the Met Service presented the media with umbrellas (that double as walking sticks) displaying the message “Ministry of Public Utilities and the Environment, MET, Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Service . . . your official weather source . . .” as we left the Crowne Plaza, well protected from the elements.