First Cut-Off-Low for 2019 to Bring Good Rainfall

Last Updated on 16th November 2019 12:10 PM by AfriWX

We have been monitoring the climate models with great anticipation of our first Cut-Off-Low (COL) for the Spring / Summer 2019 rainfall season for Southern Africa.

We are very pleased to announce that we are now seeing our first proper Cut-Off-Low developing this Friday and bringing with it good rainfall for South Africa.

You can see in the synoptic animation below how a pronounced Low-Pressure System moves in and cuts off into a well developed trough just over the West of the Country. You can then see how this low pressure system will linger over the country and help facilitate more regular rainfall for the next 7-10 days at least.

We are still seeing this current Low-Pressure System showing more strength over the Eastern parts of South Africa. Kwazulu-Natal especially looks set to see some very heavy rainfall across many parts of the province. But Gauteng, Mpumalanga, the Free State and North West provinces look set to see some good rainfall too.

We do indeed believe that this system will be the rain the finally gets our farmers planting their crops for this season. Some regions who have been drought stricken will also see relief but the central to western parts of South Africa right now are not looking favoured to this rainfall although this can change. See our latest rainfall animation below.

Make no mistake, this season so far has been very frustrating for all forecasters. We have seen climate models show great signs of hope and then we watch the forecasts dissipate. 2019 will certainly be remembered as one of the most difficult in terms of forecasting.

May it rain wherever you may be and we will certainly keep you updated. Oh … and welcome to our brand new Weather Blog.

We will keep updating this article as we monitor this system. Below is the latest GFS Climate model forecast as of this afternoon Friday 8 November 2019 at 12:39

This afternoon we brought up the ICON (German Standard) Climate Model which is now also confirming the same thing that GFS (Global Forecasting System) has been showing us the past few days.

This is very good news as the ICON model often downplays rainfall accumulation versus other weather models.

We unfortunately do not include the ECMWF model data as it requires an extensive licence fee. To broadcast and distribute any ECMWF images, users need to purchase a licence separately with ECMWF.