Page 97 - Designing Ways 250

TAIL OF
THE DOG

Rain, rain, rain

he summer of 2021 has been Intertropical Convergence Zone. In fact, the current rainfall has been
a time of extreme weather This is where the weather systems caused by an enormous high-
T– extremely wet. Vaal Dam from Angola, the DRC, Madagascar, pressure system off the east coast,
is 110% full, informal settlements Mozambique converge and create south of Madagascar, being blown
on river banks have been washed low cloud and persistent rain during in across Mozambique, bringing with
downstream. The ground is too wet the months of December and it all the rain we have had recently.
for crop planting, seeds and nutrients January. National parks are closed, Normally the thunderclouds build up
are being washed away. The constant as the roads become impassable, in the south western sky, and come
rains have been blamed on La Nina, a malaria is rife, and it is a gloomy lumbering over Johannesburg like
young lady who brings about tropical time. I thought the ITCZ had slipped huge grey space ships, offloading
rains to the Pacific Ocean area, down to Johannesburg, in support of heavy rain with lightning and thunder
alternating with her brother El Nino, accompaniment. Not this year – the
who is responsible for conditions of Zimbabwe workers here. cloud has been coming in from the
extreme drought. This is a bit far from east, and filling the sky solidly, then
El Nina’s strike area, so it is surprising. Another suggestion has been that dropping rain continuously, with the
we are in a Cut Off Low, when one occasional rumble of thunder. It has
We tend to follow the weather weather system of low pressure gets been spectacular.
fronts from the south Atlantic that cut off by an incoming high-pressure
sweep into Cape Town. After a day system, and the pressure on the American political analyst Charles
of screaming south easterly winds cloud base results in incessant Murray quoted – aptly but completely
there, 24 hours later we get fierce pouring rain. This occurs when the out of context to his work – “it has
thunderstorms here. front from the South Atlantic gets been raining cats and dogs – and I
covered by a warm wind coming just stepped into a poodle.”
Zimbabwe refers to a weather down the west coast, and the result
phenomenon called the ITCZ, or the is – rain. Gill Butler