Trinidad, Grenada now under warning over Tropical Storm Karen

(Trinidad Guardian) At 5 am to­day the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter, Mi­a­mi has up­grad­ed an area of low pres­sure lo­cat­ed to the east of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to trop­i­cal storm Karen.

At 5 am the cen­tre of the sys­tem was lo­cat­ed at 11.9°N lat­i­tude and 60.2°W lon­gi­tude or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 kilo­me­tres north­east of To­ba­go.

As a re­sult of this, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has placed Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der a Trop­i­cal Storm Warn­ing.

Fur­ther to this, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice has placed Grena­da and its de­pen­den­cies un­der a Trop­i­cal Storm Warn­ing.

Trop­i­cal Storm Karen is cur­rent­ly mov­ing to­ward the west-north­west at 15 km/h and this gen­er­al move­ment is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue for to­day.

Max­i­mum sus­tained winds are 65 km/h with high­er gusts. Trop­i­cal storm force winds ex­tend to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 120 km from the cen­tre.

A turn to­ward the north­west is fore­cast to oc­cur on Mon­day, fol­lowed by a turn to­ward the north on Tues­day.

On the fore­cast track, Karen will move across Trinidad and To­ba­go lat­er this morn­ing and emerge over the south-east­ern Caribbean Sea by Mon­day morn­ing.

The fol­low­ing is a sum­ma­ry of watch­es and warn­ing in ef­fect as of 5 am to­day:

A Trop­i­cal Storm Warn­ing is in ef­fect for…

* Trinidad and To­ba­go

* Grena­da and its de­pen­den­cies

Cit­i­zens and all con­cerned are ad­vised to close­ly fol­low the di­rec­tions and ad­vice of their Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­agers at this time. Adopt all nec­es­sary mea­sures to pre­serve life and prop­er­ty.

Re­peat­ing the po­si­tion of Karen at 5:00 am is 11.9ºN lat­i­tude 60.2ºW lon­gi­tude or about 80 kilo­me­tres north­east of To­ba­go.

The Trinidad Met Of­fice has meanwhile raised the alert lev­el to red.

It warns of pe­ri­ods of heavy to in­tense show­ers and/or thun­der­storms are like­ly. Heavy/in­tense down­pours are ex­pect­ed to re­sult in street/flash flood­ing. 
 

Gusty winds in ex­cess of 65 km/hr can be ex­pect­ed. The risk of land­slides/land­slips is very high in ar­eas so prone. Sea con­di­tions are al­so like­ly to be­come oc­ca­sion­al­ly rough.

“Ad­e­quate prepa­ra­tions should be made to safe­guard life and prop­er­ty. If you live in ar­eas that are sus­cep­ti­ble to flood­ing, es­pe­cial­ly ar­eas along the main riv­er cours­es and trib­u­taries, please be pre­pared,” the state­ment says.