A recent snowstorm in KwaZulu-Natal left motorists stranded on the N3 for hours and resulted in one death. File picture
SOUTH Africa will experience more snow storms in the coming years.
This is according to senior SA Weather Service (Saws) forecaster Puseletso Mofokeng, who was speaking on Tuesday during a briefing on weather predictions and analysis together with senior Disaster Risk Reduction manager Rudzani Malala and lead scientist of long-range prediction Christien Engelbrecht.
A recent snowstorm in KwaZulu-Natal left motorists stranded on the N3 for hours and resulted in one death.
Mofokeng said snow storms should be expected in the coming years.
“Perhaps not this year, but sometime in the future... perhaps next year and many other years to come. The good thing is that we are using impact-based forecasting, which considers both the vulnerability as well as the impact.”
He said the last two snow events had been identified in time and appropriate warnings were issued.
Malala said the recent snow storm wreaked havoc on the roads between the Free State, KZN and Eastern Cape. He said despite the warnings issued, many were affected and urged the public to be weather smart given South Africa’s vulnerability to hazardous weather events such as severe thunderstorms and floods.
“A weather smart public is one that is safe, more informed, alert, resilient, and has timely access to relevant information and services where matters of the weather and climate are concerned,” he said.
Malala advised that snow in late winter and early spring was not unusual.
“In fact, the more intense extreme snow systems tend to affect Southern Africa in very late winter, especially over the eastern provinces. We have even had snow in Johannesburg as late as October; you will remember the incident that occurred in 2011,” he said.
He added that snow is a phenomenon not restricted only to the winter months or on rare occasions.
“Three times in the past century, snow has occurred on New Year's Day over KwaZulu-Natal’s Drakensberg.”
Engelbrecht said while the recent snow events were not rare, the depth of the snow in some areas on the N3 reached up to 80 centimetres.
“I think that is quite rare. I think this is one of the snow events with one of the largest impacts in what we can recall, but in terms of the time of the year that the event occurred, that is not unusual.”
Engelbrecht provided a forecast of what we can expect for the season ahead.
She said for the remainder of spring and into the summer months of the 2024-25 summer, our main climate driver, the El Niño Southern Oscillation, will be in a neutral phase and was predicted to move to a La Niña event, which is weak.
“In terms of the rainfall patterns for the remainder of spring and the mid-summer period over southern Africa, we are not that certain. The probabilities for above-normal rainfall, which one usually expects or typically occurs during a La Niña event, are low and it's a bit patchy.”
However, Engelbrecht said the only area where most seasonal prediction models do indicate higher or a more consistent rainfall outcome is over the south-eastern part of the country.
Malala said a relatively hot summer in the months of December, January and February, was expected over much of the country. “Communities should also be mindful of the likelihood of sustained spells of hot, dry weather, as well as the possibility of heat waves,” he said.