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Heavy rainfall floods Eastern Cape

EXTREME WEATHER: A group of children play in a flooded section of the road leading to the Fort Grey Clinic. PHOTO: MARK ANDREWS
EXTREME WEATHER: A group of children play in a flooded section of the road leading to the Fort Grey Clinic. PHOTO: MARK ANDREWS

EASTERN Cape residents can forget the suntan lotion and beach towels because they are better off with umbrellas and gumboots this summer - thanks to the wet weather phenomenon La Nina.

According to forecasters La Nina, which brings with it wetter-than-normal summers, has set in from December and is due to stay until April next year. La Nina involves the cooling of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific, causing a general global cooling.

Eastern Cape residents have already experienced a foretaste of the phenomenon, with heavy deluges in many parts of the province last week turning playing fields into swimming pools and roads into rivers.

In Nelson Mandela Bay the total rainfall for November was almost double the norm - 97mm at the Port Elizabeth Airport compared with an annual average of 49mm.

"National rainfall will be above normal for at least the next five months," said Hugh van Niekerk, a Mandela Bay-based SA Weather Service meteorologist.

"The minimum temperatures in the interior will be below normal, while maximum temperatures will also be lower than normal."

La Nina is typically linked to extreme weather conditions, including heavy downpours of rain, although Van Niekerk said it had not been linked to climate change.

Last week the World Meteorological Organisation said this year had been the warmest on record for a year in which La Nina had occurred.

Temperatures are usually higher during El Nino, the weather phenomenon typically associated with drought and heat, which brought Eastern Cape farmers to their knees in 2009 and early 2010.

"Any rainfall is welcome, because they [farmers] expe-rienced a couple of dry seasons [in the Eastern Cape]," said Agri SA economist Dawie Maree.

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