The public didn’t understand the level of risk with the snow — climatologist

A climatologist has revealed SA is good at forecasting inclement weather and sending out warnings timeously to citizens. However, the chaos that happened when heavy snow fell in parts of KwaZulu-Natal shows we don’t have strategies to deal with extreme weather.

A man died of hypothermia after the taxi in which he was travelling was stuck in snow in Howick. As many roads were impassable, many vehicles were stuck on the road for more than 20 hours, resulting in people being cold, stranded and hungry while 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 plans to clear the roads before the weather became dangerous, ensuring no one was stuck.

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 were warm enough

“Those are some of the things we weren’t yet prepared for so the [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. I think disaster management teams didn’t see the severity of it coming,” she said.

Fitchett said another challenge was the public understanding of the level of risk and what it means when weather services put out alerts about severe weather, specially with snow.

“People love snow, so 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 aware of the dangers associated with particularly heavy snowfall events.”

Adelaide Mathe from QwaQwa in 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 when their vehicle got stuck in the thick snow.

While they were aware the weather would not be favourable as their vehicle indicated it 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 became 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 cried because of this experience. We were stuck and a man came and helped us tow our cars.

“We were on 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 next 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 wet and freezing weather in many parts of the country this weekend were caused by a cut-off low. These can develop from the mid-latitude cyclones that bring wet weather to the south of the country, but break off from those systems, resulting in heavy and more prolonged precipitation.

“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 past 48-hours, but it also results in snowfall events,” she said.

According to Fitchett, snow falling during spring in KwaZulu-Natal is not unheard of.

“We do get cut-off low events in September and we do get snowfall in the Drakensberg and Maluti.

“I think in the 1970s and 1980s there were snowfall events in Johannesburg in September.

“It is not unheard of that a mid-latitude cyclone will come through sufficiently as far north at that time of the year, and when we have a cut-off low forming we have the potential for snowfall.”

Fitchett said while heavy snowfall is a rare event, it was a learning opportunity.

“Whether there will be another snowfall event of this nature in 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.”