[imagesource:here]

We’ve shown you fine folks regular updates of the water levels of the city’s six major dams (our last from June 20), and those low 20% numbers are a sobering reminder of how far we are from having any breathing room.

Despite that, there are murmurings of the old ‘I can finally have a bath / soak a little longer in the shower’ vibes going on, so maybe we should take a look at what the Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG) at the University of Cape Town have to say.

We’ll start with their blog post from two weeks, titled “Are rains good this season?“:

By now, the drought “officially” lasts for over two years (in fact, 2015-2017 was the driest three-year period on record that started in the early 20th century). In the last two years, we have all been bombarded with messages with increasing level of gloom and urgency…

To help us all understand our predicament, we at CSAG, have developed a “rainfall monitor” – an online graph that presents this season’s rainfall in the context of long-term conditions. Based on the most recent rainfall data (subject to availability, of course), one can see how the season’s total compares to that recorded in years since 1977. It’s interactive – one can choose to view rainfall time series in different ways, and relate current conditions to years one remembers.

You can find their rainfall monitor HERE, but we took a few screenshots that drive home how bad a mess we are in.

This is 40 years worth of recorded rainfall stats from the airport – 2017 in orange, the median in black, and the shaded blue area representing the 20-80 percentile range:

That’s 2017, toiling down the bottom there in the orange. Frightening, right?

The problem is only compounded by 2016, the pink line below, which was also a shocker:

Check out what it looks like when we compare 2013, one of the wetter years of the past 40 years, with 2017 thus far:

Another graph that shows our plight – the daily rainfall recorded at the airport, set against the highest daily recording of the past 40 years.

We reached new heights during the infamous #CapeStorm (I’m going to need you to relax), but other than that it’s been pitiful:

And compare that with 2013, plotted on the same graph in orange:

Not a good look.

In case you missed it, yesterday saw the City once again escalate the water restrictions to 4b. IOL reports:

Level 4b water restrictions allow individual users 87 litres a day. Capetonians are allowed to use 500 million litres a day.

It has been reduced from 600 million litres a day, an objective which was not attained…

“As we are expecting a very dry summer 2018 and rainfall probability and volume remains incredibly uncertain, we must cut our water use even more to save as much water as we can while we still have water,” said Xanthea Limberg, mayoral committee member for informal settlements, water and sanitation.

Despite previous water restrictions, many domestic consumers were still using over 20000 litres a month per household, Limberg said.

“We have been monitoring and engaging with high users and we will be issuing letters to them to warn them that we will be installing water management devices at properties with unjustifiably high consumption to limit their water use to acceptable levels,” she said.

To sum it all up – NO, you don’t get to enjoy an extra long soak because it’s been gloomy and rainy.

NO, we’re not even close to digging ourselves out of this dry and dusty hole.

YES, if it’s yellow you let that thing mellow.

Do your own rainfall graph snooping over on CSAG’s excellent tool HERE.

[sources:csag&iol]