[imagesource:pexels]

The storm that just hit South Africa has been our country’s most recent onslaught.

It is clear that this year has been our wettest in the last 10 years, but the Heritage Day weekend alone saw more rainfall than anything before in the province’s recent history.

As VoxWeather notes, a crazy 22 rainfall records were broken in one day across the Western, Northern, and Eastern Cape, causing major damage and leaving hundreds of people stranded.

The weather reporters said that these were observations measured at the verified automated SAWS weather stations across the country, so it’s possible that other areas also broke records.

Social media has been flooded with images of the devastation, while on the ground people were left desolate, roads were closed, mudslides were reported, damages to properties were experiences and people and animals had to be evacuated.

Sadly, the City of Cape Town confirmed that its Disaster Operations Centre received confirmation of eight fatalities caused by electrocution, per EWN.

Here are the top five rainfall records that were smashed on Heritage Day, September 24:

️ !!️

(Measured on 24 September 2023)

‼️ Overall, 22 rainfall records were broken in one day across the Western, Northern and Eastern Cape#voxweather #recordbreaking #CapeStorms #rainfallrecords #flooding pic.twitter.com/h3cZJECdWI

— Vox Weather (@VoxWeatherZa) September 26, 2023

Where Cape Town received 47 millimetres of rain in September 1981, it received a whopping 126mm this year – let that sink in.

The terrible storm was caused by a strong “cut-off low-pressure system”, which moved over the Cape provinces with heavy rain and pounding winds. Dr Peter Johnston, a climate scientist and research officer at the University of Cape Town’s Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG) and Kate Turner, a forecaster at the South African Weather Service (Saws) explained what this all means to the Daily Maverick:

A cut-off low is a “type of weather system that develops in the upper air causing showers and thundershowers”, Turner explained.

“These kinds of lows can be very severe. They can range from almost not affecting anything to … very severe; they’re one of the most intense systems that we could potentially get over the country. So this is not uncommon for us. But yes, this was definitely a very intense system that moved over, over the last couple of days.”

This kind of weather may not be that uncommon, but we’ve rarely had more rainfall over the last three days than we have in two winter months, as Turner said, adding that “it’s been phenomenal”.

In fact, Turner says the City of Cape Town had 143mm of rainfall over the two days.

While attributing these kinds of extreme weather events to climate change remains a complex task, one can’t help but think it plays a part. At the end of the day, as Earth’s temperature rises due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases, more intense and unpredictable weather patterns will abound.

Most people might think about global warming in terms of extreme heat, but there is also an increased risk of extreme precipitation. Think of rain as Earth’s sweat, where moisture evaporates and gets carried away in clouds, where the water condenses and falls as rain in severe storms. Then, the greenhouse gases act as a blanket – like a massive down comforter, locking all the heat and moisture in, sending a flurry of extreme rainfall across the globe – because what goes up simply has to come down.

Basically, as the Earth warms, so more rain will fall.

If you want to know more about all of this, head over to Wired, which has all the science on the matter.

[source:voxweather&wired]