I;ve been reading about the forcast for an upcoming strong El Niño pattern next year. In the past, I recall that means pleant of rain inthe US, and drought in southern Africa.

Poking around I found this report on the last one:

http://reliefweb.int/report/zimbabwe/el-niño-impacts-africa

Any of you Africa dwellers expect drought next year?

I just got back from western Namibia and the area I was is already in year four of a drought. When you only get 6 inches of rain in a "good" year, no rain at all can get ugly in a hurry!

hatari, at this moment it seems pretty accurate. We already had a pretty bad year up till now. Plenty of farmers in large parts of the northern part of South-Africa had a very dry year. I know farmers that only harvested around 400kg of maize per hectare, which is of course a huge loss.

According to some reports we are going to have a very dry early summer. If the rain only comes late December some guys will have serious problems. I know that plenty of animals had to be culled in southern Namibia because there is simply not enough food and water.

I do hope that it is better than predicted.

Pieter

Pieter,

Sorry to hear that. I remember when we had the reverse weather pattern in 2000, the La Niña, and Zambia was still so green in July the grass wouldn't burn.

I'm hoping the pattern breaks and you get a decent rainy season. Thanks for the report and thanks for the beautiful photo!