Dear weather-watchers,

As we are witnessing weather records breaking around the world in these days, we had a share of these ourselves..:


Swakopmund

• Swakopmunders will not easily forget the unrelenting east winds of June 2022, particularly Monday 27th of June, which was the dustiest east wind storm of the past 22 years (see bottom of page 6). This dust storm caused damage along the coast, with walls and fences blown over and some buildings unroofed.

• This dust storm was preceded by an unusual spell of ‘winter rain’ as a cold front struck the coast, leading to localised flooding in Swakopmund and Walvis Bay (see top of page 6).

• June also saw the longest streak of 11 days of uninterrupted east winds in Swakopmund since I began recording weather. This streak toppled the previous record of 9 days of continuous east wind in July of 2004.

• On the 29th of June I measured the strongest ever east wind gust of 66.1 kmh in Swakopmund since my measurements began.

• These powerful east winds made June 2022 the warmest, and by far the windiest June of the past 22 years, and the windiest month overall by far (see page 2).


Windhoek

• Windhoek broke the record of the coldest June of the past 22 years, jumping thereafter to one of the warmest July’s.

• Although Windhoek was unusually cloudy this winter, no rain made it to the ground.




ENSO News

The El Nino Southern Oscillation forecasts of Monday 8th of August still look promising for the coming rainy season in that a prediction of a moderate strength La Nina still remains in place (pages 3-5). However the La Nina peaks around November/December, which is rather early. After November/December the La Nina is predicted to weaken fairly rapidly. This could impact the second half of the rainy season and could cause the rains to drop off earlier than normal. It appears that the three year long spell of La Nina’s that we have benefited from could be coming to an end after this coming rainy season, and so I would advise the farmers to be cautious going forward.

In the next circular I will look at the Indian Ocean Dipole forecast as well.