National Weather Warning

Conditions which may lead to the development and spread of runaway fires are expected over the West Coast district and in places in the Swartland and Boland of the Western Cape.
Heavy falls of rain are possible in places over the central and western Free State, extreme eastern parts of the Northern Cape, Lesotho as well as northern KwaZulu-Natal. Very cold conditions are expected over the southern interior of KwaZulu-Natal as well as over the Drakensberg.

New Climate Records Yesterday (South Africa)

Highest Minimum
23.8 2003-12-17
25.8 2007-12-03
Kathu

Once again, not a fractional increase, but 2 entire degrees Celcius higher. I've started to give up on publishing HOLIDAY, and will begin something new soon. Working title: FIRE AND ICE (set in South Africa).

Alert: New Weather Record at Hermanus Yesterday

Highest Daily Rain 24.8mm 1996-11-19
New Record: 66.2mm 2007-11-20
Location: Hermanus

NVDL: Note that this wasn't a 1mm difference. The previous record was smashed by more than double the original figure, an increase of 41.4mm on a fairly recent record.

KwaZulu and Gauteng Rainfall Records, Weather Warning And Weekend Weather

Rainfall records

Looking at the table of rainfall figures below one can see that a number of places received heavy rainfall, with Durban, Greytown and Pennington South breaking their previous 24-hour rainfall record for November. It is also interesting to note that on this one day Durban received 251% of its normal rainfall for the first ten days of the month, while Mount Edgecombe received 227% and Richards Bay 165%.

NVDL: Many of the previous records are recent, 4 out of 6 between 2000 and 2006. Climate change will affect SA by creating a vastly wetter Eastern Region, and drying the Western Interior. All areas will be more susceptible to storms, and extreme weather - floods and droughts.

Also yesterday:
Highest Daily Rain: Was - 49.4mm (2001-11-24) Now: 58.0 (2007-11-06) Witbank

Warning:
Isolated heavy falls of rain are possible in the escarpment and lowveld areas of Mpumalanga and Limpopo, including the Soutpansberg.

Weekend Temperatures:


More:

Icebergs passing north of SANAE IV along the coast of Dronning Maud Land
Serious Beach Erosion continuing along the KwaZulu-Natal Coast
Gauteng Snow
The Legacy of Tropical Cyclone Gamede
Sea Level Pressure Analysis and Satellite-derived Ocean Surface Wind Fields

Humberto Hits Texas

Hurricane Humberto slams Texas coast
4 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Hurricane Humberto blasted across southeast Texas Thursday as it headed toward Louisiana, packing strong winds and triggering fears of flooding, US forecasters said.

Humberto emerged as a tropical storm over the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday and suddenly mushroomed into a hurricane moments before slamming ashore on the Texas coast early Thursday, packing winds as strong as 135 kilometers (85 miles) per hour.

The category one hurricane -- the lowest strength on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale -- crawled across Texas toward neighboring Louisiana at 13 kilometers (eight miles) per hour, the US National Hurricane Center said.

Humberto is the third hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic storm season, following two maximum category five storms that slammed Mexico and Central American in August and earlier this month.

The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings in parts of Texas and Louisiana. The hurricane center warned the storm could also produce isolated tornadoes

2 x 5 CATs

Updated: 8:17 a.m. ET Sept. 4, 2007

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras - Hurricane Felix roared ashore early Tuesday as a fearsome Category 5 storm — the first time in recorded history that two top-scale storms have come ashore in the same season. The storm hit near the swampy Nicaragua-Honduras border, home to thousands of stranded Miskito Indians dependent on canoes to make their way to safety.
Twenty fishermen were missing, and communication to the area was cut off.

It's Happening Again

The storm has strengthened into a Category 4 storm and is expected to reach Category 5 status later Saturday. Winds hit 150 mph as it headed on a collision course with Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where it is forecast to become a Category 5 storm. (AP Photo/NOAA)

Early 2007 saw record-breaking extreme weather: U.N.

By Laura MacInnis Tue Aug 7, 9:57 AM ET
GENEVA (Reuters) - The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heatwaves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said on Tuesday.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began in 1880, at more than 1 degree Celsius higher than average for those months.

There have also been severe monsoon floods across South Asia, abnormally heavy rains in northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay, extreme heatwaves in southeastern Europe and Russia, and unusual snowfall in South Africa and South America this year, the WMO said.

"The start of the year 2007 was a very active period in terms of extreme weather events," Omar Baddour of the agency's World Climate Program told journalists in Geneva.

While most scientists believe extreme weather events will be more frequent as heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions cause global temperatures to rise, Baddour said it was impossible to say with certainty what the second half of 2007 will bring.

"It is very difficult to make projections for the rest of the year," he said.

HEALTH CRISIS

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. umbrella group of hundreds of experts, has noted an increasing trend in extreme weather events over the past 50 years and said irregular patterns are likely to intensify.

South Asia's worst monsoon flooding in recent memory has affected 30 million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, destroying croplands, livestock and property and raising fears of a health crisis in the densely-populated region.

Heavy rains also doused southern China in June, with nearly 14 million people affected by floods and landslides that killed 120 people, the WMO said.

England and Wales this year had their wettest May and June since records began in 1766, resulting in extensive flooding and more than $6 billion in damage, as well as at least nine deaths. Germany swung from its driest April since country-wide observations started in 1901 to its wettest May on record.

Mozambique suffered its worst floods in six years in February, followed by a tropical cyclone the same month, and flooding of the Nile River in June caused damage in Sudan.

Uruguay had its worst flooding since 1959 in May.
Huge swell waves swamped some 68 islands in the Maldives in May, resulting in severe damage, and the Arabian Sea had its first documented cyclone in June, touching Oman and Iran.

Temperature records were broken in southeastern Europe in June and July, and in western and central Russia in May. In many European countries, April was the warmest ever recorded.

Argentina and Chile saw unusually cold winter temperatures in July while South Africa had its first significant snowfall since 1981 in June.

The WMO and its 188 member states are working to set up an early warning system for extreme weather events. The agency is also seeking to improve monitoring of the impacts of climate change, particularly in poorer countries which are expected to bear the brunt of floods, droughts and storms.

Triple-digit heat searing West

A 1-year-old boy was found dead Wednesday evening in a locked car in temperatures approaching 100 degrees in Orofino, Idaho. He was locked in the car for about five hours when passers-by noticed him, and the boy's stepgrandmother was charged in his death, authorities said Thursday.

Around Las Vegas -- where temperatures reached 116 degrees Thursday afternoon -- transformers overheated and caused electrical pole fires because of all the people switching on their air conditioners, said Scott Allison with the Clark County Fire Department.

In Montana, farmers anxiously watched their crops and thermometers. High temperatures for a handful of days can harm crop yield.

"Prolonged heat is devastating. Four or five days of it is going to be hard," said wheat farmer Lynn Nordwick near Poplar, Montana. Watch how a drought is spreading »

In Spokane, Washington, the temperature reached 101 degrees, surpassing the record 100 degrees.

Northeastern Oregon residents experienced what was expected to be the hottest day of the year Thursday, with temperatures reaching 108 in Pendleton and 107 in Hermiston.

The heat wave began last week after a large high-pressure center developed over Arizona, said National Weather Service forecaster Paul Flatt in Boise. A weather pattern was pushing that high-pressure center north into Canada, Flatt said, but most of the West is expected to experience high temperatures into next week.

Meanwhile, another round of heavy rain drenched parts of eastern Texas early Friday. State emergency management chief Jack Colley said all of Texas' major river basins are at flood stage, the first time that has happened since 1957.

Records tumble: months of extremes hit UK

John Vidal,

environment editor

Tuesday June 26, 2007

The Guardian

After a drought last year, the autumn and winter combined were the wettest on record in Britain, and the three months of spring were the hottest on record for the whole of the UK, since 1914.

Despite the rain, average June temperatures so far are well above normal. Yet in April it was hard to believe Britain was not becoming as climatically attractive as the south of France, or the highlands of Kenya.

The early summer was the warmest, sunniest and driest, with the average temperature for April 11.1C (52F), beating the previous record of 10.6C, set in 1865. South-east and eastern England had next to no rain, prompting fears of another drought.

Totals for April were 2mm, around 5% of average rainfall. Wales, and south-west, central and northern England had only around 20% of the monthly average. The exception was north-west England, at nearly 40% of average rain.

CNN etc Today

"The fact that you've got almost a year's worth of tornadoes in less than 24 hours is unusual in that extent," Environment Canada's David Phillips told CTV.ca Tuesday.

...We had almost three times as many as normal," Schaefer said...

...It was even worse in Mississauga, where the mercury reached 36C. That's weather health experts describe as 'dangerous', and it's going to stay on full broil late into Wednesday...


Bob Kerslake, the chief executive of Sheffield city council, said the area had seen the greatest amount of rain since records began 125 years ago.

THE icy weather of snow, hail and heavy rain that has swept across South Africa over the past few days has set 54 weather records. (Cape Times, May 23)
Top: Canada, Middle: Pakistan, Free State (South Africa) Above: Sheffield, Britain.