Climate smart people are keeping a sharp eye out for extreme weather outbursts — each with their own psychotic synoptic character.
One lethal storm — dubbed “the Bath Plug” — is the cut-off-low (COL) pressure system.
It acts like a massive drain sucking vast amounts of energy and moisture from high pressure systems which cut it off from it’s usually merry path around the sub-arctic latitudes, hold it and squeeze it hard.
We had one this week, but it was relatively mild, unlike the four others this year which killed over 460 people in the Eastern Cape and KZN.
This week’s COL lacked the tropical whiplash — a phenomenon linked to ocean warming.
Severe weather meteorologist Angelo Ricardo de Hoorn, said that Wednesday’s COL lowering over the Eastern Cape dumping snow and rain amid gusts would not be as intense.
Severe Weather and Information Centre director De Hoorn was the only meteorologist to warn about the 126km/h gust front which smashed into East London on 5.30am on Monday August 8.
He told Off Track this week’s COL had settled in over the Eastern Cape — after the cold front left the continent on Monday.
The killer Durban COL in April was found to be part of the climate crisis by a global group of scientists, and were part of the same amplified weather patterns which caused three more this year.
De Hoorn said an upper air trough was dominating the weather and was expected to “intensify into a COL” on Wednesday.
“Stay safe,” he said.
The World Weather Attribution climate group found that COL-type storms were twice as likely to happen in coming years and each would be eight percent more powerful.
The SA Weather Service had earlier said they did not have enough data to analyse the lethal Durban deluge, and while climate change was happening, they could not attribute the storm to the climate crisis.
Buffalo City was hit by deluges on January 8 and 9 in which nine people died, and there was widespread damage when a COL swung in off the ocean and clattered into the city at 126km/h at 5.30am on Monday August 8.
De Hoorn said this week’s COL was not expected to be as severe and would be colder.
The COLs earlier this year had “a touch of the tropics” and that the Durban deluge had morphed into a “subtropical storm”.
In a statement on Sunday, the SA Weather Service gave this week’s stormy weather an orange level 6 warning — 10 is the worst — for disruptive rain in the Eastern Cape, flooding of settlements, roads, low lying areas and bridges.
SAWS gave an orange level 5 warning for snow in the southern Drakensberg in the Eastern Cape, meaning dangerous driving conditions and communities being cut off.
Roads would be icy and vulnerable livestock could die from cold in the mountains.
SAWS predicted heavy, persistent rain, wind, snow and low cloud.
It stated a “well-developed upper-air trough” bringing cold and instability was intensifying in the west and would move east.
It said the rainy spell would be a welcome relief to the “rather dry” interior.
Thursday was expected to be rain-free.
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