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A climatologist has revealed that SA is good at forecasting inclement weather and sending out warnings timeously to citizens. But the chaos that happened when heavy snow fell in parts of KwaZulu-Natal shows we don’t have strategies in place to deal with extreme climates.
A man died of hypothermia after the taxi he was travelling in was stuck in the snow in Howick. As many roads were impassable, other vehicles were stuck on the road for more than 20 hours resulting in people being cold, stranded and hungry as they waited for help in freezing conditions.
Jennifer Fitchett, a professor of physical geography at Wits University, said the impact of the disaster was not well anticipated. She said had it been anticipated there would have been a need to clear the roads ahead of the weather becoming dangerous and ensuring that no one is stuck.
Also, she said being prepared would also mean being able to get people who found themselves stuck on the road to places of safety and making sure they are warm enough.
“Those are some of the things we weren’t yet prepared for so it [response] was reactive rather than proactive.
“Weather forecasting has come a long way and we have very skilled forecasters in SA, but the response to extreme climate events requires interdisciplinary collaboration – rescue organisations, traffic management, healthcare, logistics, all needing to come together at short notice.
“There should have been a bit more preparedness. Snow is not unheard of in SA and the few snowfalls a year usually don’t cause this much disruption. So, I think disaster management teams didn’t see the severity of it coming,” she said.
Fitchett also said another challenge was the public understanding of the level of risk and what it means when the weather services put out alerts about severe weather, especially with snow.
“People love snow, so if anything they get excited when there is a snow warning and that is different from a tropical cyclone warning.
“Everyone associates a tropical cyclone or hurricane with bad weather but for a lot of people, snow seems to be exciting and that is the first problem.
“Not many people are not aware of the dangers associated with, particularly heavy snowfall events.”
Adelaide Mathe from QwaQwa in the Free State was with her family on the way to Mooi River for a holiday when the heavy snowfall disrupted their plans.
Mathe, 60, was with her daughter and three grandchildren aged five, three, and two years old when their vehicle got stuck in the thick snow.
While they were aware that the weather would not be favourable as their vehicle indicated was freezing, she said they were not expecting it to snow.
Mathe said they were a few minutes away from their destination but could not reach it as the car got stuck in the snow. They were there for six hours until a nearby farmer helped them.
“I am not good at all,” she said.
“I even cried because of this experience. We were stuck and a certain man came and helped us tow our cars.
“We were at a steep hill and couldn’t move so he helped us push it,” she said.
They spent the night at a filling station and drove to Estcourt town hall the following day where Gift of the Givers provided warm meals and drinks.
“We always see such things [stuck in snow] on TV but it happened to us,” she said.
Fitchett said the snowfall and the wet and freezing weather in many parts of the country this weekend were caused by the cut-of-low system, a mid-latitude cyclone that comes through and is responsible for the majority of rain experienced in the south Western Cape during winter.
“When we have a stronger low cut-offs system we’re more likely to have moist conditions right across the interior. For example, in Johannesburg, there was quite a lot of drizzle over the last 48 hours but it also results in snowfall events,” she said.
According to Fitchett, the snow falling during spring in KwaZulu-Natal, a province known for its subtropical, was not something unheard of.
“We do get cut off low events happen in September and we do get snowfalls in the Drakensberg and Maluti.
“I think in the 1970s and 1980s there were snowfall events even in Johannesburg in September.
“So, it not unheard of that this mid-latitude cyclone will manage to come through sufficiently as far north at that time of the year and when we have a cut-low forming, then we have the potential of snowfall.”
Fitchett said while this heavy snowfall is a rare event, it was a learning opportunity.
“However, whether there will be another snowfall event of this nature in say the next 50 or 100 years is pretty unlikely but not impossible.
“That is the challenge with extreme weather events. We can learn from one event and put in a lot of strategies but we will be faced with a different kind of extreme event that needs different strategies,” she said.
