/ 10 June 2009

Inclement weather expected to lift by weekend

The icy winds and grey skies over the northern part of South Africa will start disappearing from Friday, says the South African Weather Service.

The icy winds and grey skies over the northern part of South Africa will start disappearing from Friday, says the South African Weather Service, after which there’ll be at least seven days of arguable normality.

According to Jacqueline Riet, a forecaster at the South African Weather Service, the recent low temperatures across the central, northern and eastern parts of South Africa — which dropped to maximums of ten degrees in Standerton and 13 degrees in Mafikeng on Wednesday — will not be around for long.

And contrary to popular belief, it was not caused by snow in the Drakensberg. Rather, it can be blamed on, or attributed to — depending on your proximity to a heater — a cut-off low system currently centred over Botswana. ”The system generates a lot of moisture around itself, which is associated with thunder showers,” says Riet. ”The moisture also leads to clouds, which means we haven’t had a lot of sun coming through, and it also generates interior surface winds.”

But she says that the system will weaken considerably from Thursday, and will be exiting the country through the east. ”By Friday we will have partly cloudy conditions and rising temperatures.”

What made this system significant was that it affected a large number of areas at once, and all were areas associated with summer rains. ”It’s not freak conditions, but it’s not very frequent either,” says Riet.

According to Dikatso Mametse, a media spokesperson for Eskom, while there has been an increase in demand for electricity over the cold period, load-shedding is unlikely. ”Currently Eskom is able to handle the impact of the unusual weather in all [the] areas,” said Mametse.