Severe Weather: Record temperatures keep rising as heavy rains fall

Tap Water

Cape Town - While heavy downpours are being recording across the country, the water crisis and effects of the drought are far from over.


Garth Sampson for the SA Weather Service in the Eastern Cape says that although "some nice falls were recorded over the dry eastern half of the [Eastern Cape] province" over the past few weeks, rainfall still remain low overall.

In the northern and western parts of the country, dry conditions still continue and Western Cape authorities remain on standby to fight wildfires that occur frequently.

Sampson says regardless of the rainfall, people should continue to use water sparingly.

The whole of SA has seen some severe weather reports since the start of 2016.

The Kruger National Park is currently coping with heavy downpour, which saw various roads and low water bridges closed off to the public. This severe downpour comes less than two days after Kruger National Park on Monday, 7 March, announced it has opened up waterholes in some dry riverbeds in a bid to save vulnerable animals from the drought that has affected parts of the world renowned tourist destination.

Temperatures over the past two days caused severe discomfort as a heatwave struck SA in the northernmost parts of the country, reaching persistently high temperatures over the extreme southern parts of Limpopo, the northern parts of Gauteng, the western highveld and the lowveld of Mpumalanga.

This severe weather has been coming on for months.

Addo Elephant National Park on Monday, 1 February, also said it recorded an all-time heat record in the Park, since temperature measurements started in 2005.

The Port Elizabeth office of the South African Weather Service confirmed at the mercury rose to a staggering 46.6°C in Addo on the day.

Earlier, in January, the SA Weather Service said that according to their preliminary data, 36 highest maximum temperature records were reached during the heatwave that gripped parts of the country at the time.

The heatwave persisted, and 21 areas (displayed in the table below (highlighted in yellow) were the highest ever maximum temperatures recorded in the specific areas - recording new record highs within a matter of days.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE: SA summer heat breaks 21 records: What's going on with the weather?

More recently, Sampson also confirmed that the Eastern Cape region as a whole endured one of the warmest summers since 2000.

"Most of the all-time maximum temperature records occurred in the 2002/2003 season and the 2013/14 season," Sampson says. But the 2015/2016 season saw eight records smashed in the Eastern Cape alone.

Those records can be seen in the chart below (highlighted in grey):