Severe thunderstorms with ail and intense lighting are expected for Pretoria on Thursday.
According to VoxWeather forecaster Michelle du Plessis, there is a yellow level two warning in place for severe thunderstorms with damaging winds, hail, intense lightning, and heavy rainfall that are expected over Gauteng, the Highveld of Mpumalanga, the western interior of KwaZulu-Natal, central and eastern parts of the Free State, and eastern parts of North West.
“Today, scattered thunderstorms are possible. The weather service has issued a yellow level 2 warning for the storms.
“On Friday, scattered thunderstorms are again possible. The thunderstorms will mainly occur over central and southern Gauteng.”
Du Plessis said only a few showers are expected on Saturday and Sunday.
Here are your expected temperatures:
- Thursday: 24° 22°
- Friday: 27° 24°
- Saturday: 32° 24°
- Sunday: 27° 22°
“It is important to note that the models are struggling to predict accurately since the South African Weather Service’s national weather station network is down.
“We know they experienced a cyberattack, and the network has been offline for the last two weeks. This has had a significant impact on forecasting, as there is no observational data for the models to use.
“We’ve already seen one or two instances where the models predicted almost no rain for certain areas, but storms still moved over those areas.”
Last month, the SA Weather Services revealed that it was the target of at least two cyberattacks over the weekend, with the second taking down its IT systems.
The government agency said in a notice that its systems had gone down due to a criminal security breach.
“Our aviation and marine services were affected, as well as emails and website, however, alternative communication measures were put in place,” it stated.
“The public is advised to rely on our social media platforms for weather information.”
The SA Weather Service (SAWS) said it was busy reporting the attack to the relevant authorities.
“The attack was the second in the space of two days after the first attempt on Saturday, 25 January failed,” it said.
Also read: Several ‘Afrikaans Uber’ Wanatu vehicles impounded
Do you have more information about the story?
Please send us an email to [email protected] or phone us on 083 625 4114.
For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord’s websites: Rekord East
For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram
At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
