GARDEN ROUTE | KAROO NEWS - The Garden Route can brace itself for strong winds and heavy rains at the weekend – especially around midnight on Saturday - which in certain areas can mean rainfall of between 50mm and 100mm.
According to meteorologist Annette Botha from Vox Weather, who issued an early weather alert on TikTok today, Friday 22 September, the first strong spring cut-off low system is heading for South Africa.
She said cut-off lows are South Africa’s biggest rain-bearing weather systems. “It is the same type of system that was responsible for the 1981 Laingsburg floods and the 2022 KZN floods”.
The South African Weather Service (SAWS) in Cape Town said earlier today that it was still working on warnings to be issued later today and that people should consult the SAWS website.
Surprise Mhlongo, a SAWS forecaster in Cape Town, confirmed the broader weather predictions and the cut-off low, also saying that severe weather warnings are expected to be issued for the Northern, Western and Eastern Cape, “with the possibility of widespread rain, high winds and flooding”.
Botha said for those areas, especially the coastal towns, gale-force easterly to south-easterly winds picking up along the coast are “extremely dangerous”, gusting more than 80km an hour in some areas and the Karoo.
“And then a strong north-westerly wind picking up over large parts of the Cape provinces on Monday with this onshore flow that will bring the biggest danger associated with cut-off lows – and that’s heavy rainfall.”
She said that cut-off low weather systems are extremely volatile and the forecast can change from one day to the next.
She advised people to seek regular updates on the weather patterns, because rainfall amounts can also decrease or increase as the low pressure system moves across South Africa from Saturday until next Tuesday.
Botha said a cut-off low has an extremely cold course “and you can expect a steep drop in temperature across the country in the next few days”. The advance model was also picking up the possibility of snow on Monday and Tuesday over the Southern Drakensberg, as well as Lesotho and the extreme southern areas of the Free State.
*Botha explained that a cut-off low is a low-pressure system very high up in the atmosphere that basically cuts itself off from a normal westerly flow of air and extends “skew-wards” to another low at the surface.
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