By Garth Sampson
The Port Elizabeth Office of the South African weather Service is monitoring the predicted development of a weather system which may result in some moderate to heavy rainfall over the Eastern Cape Region from Saturday 31 October Afternoon in the form of showers and thundershowers. The system that is anticipated is called an upper air cut-off low pressure with a surface high pressure system feeding in moisture from the Ocean.
Unfortunately the development and movement of these systems are extremely difficult to predict and there is a lot of discrepancy between our forecast models.
While some models favour good falls over the Eastern Cape Region from Saturday through until Monday 2 November morning other forecast models are forecasting little to no rainfall.
It is simply too far ahead to accurately predict the location and the extent of the anticipated rainfall.
The Port Elizabeth weather Office is monitoring the situation and as soon as there is more confidence and alignment between the various forecast models we will issue the relevant forecast and warnings if need be.
In the meant time you are reminded that it is illegal to send out weather related warnings and entice the public with unauthorised weather information on social media platforms.
UPDATE
As a follow on to yesterdays discussion of some Weather Apps predicting heavy rains for this weekend over the Western Half of the Easter Cape.
These apps, have changed their prediction to a much more watered down situation.
In other words the weekends event is now a non-event.
However some nice falls are expected over the Eastern Half of the province in especially the former Transkei.
The Port Elizabeth Office of the South African Weather Service can confirm that apart from some showers and thundershowers today, very little rain is expected over the Western half of the Eastern Cape (west of the line from East London to Cradock) for the next three days. Cooler wet weather is expected in the form of thundershowers over Joe Gqabi and Chris Hani districts while general rain, showers and thundershowers are expected on and off over Alfred Nzo and OR Tambo districts until Sunday evening (01/11/2020). The heavier rainfall will be concentrated towards the border with Lesotho and the Drakensberg where moderate to heavy falls are likely in places.
The Port Elizabeth Weather Office will continue monitoring the situation and the relevant warnings will be issued if need be.
PLEASE NOTE: Weather Apps use a single model (except Windy where you can choose between TWO different models) for their predictions.The SAWS uses numerous models and constantly compares and evaluates these models on an ongoing basis. In other words there is human intervention in SAWS forecasts.
