Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Steve Pike
DURBAN easily purloined the Mother City’s hard- earned moniker of Cape of Storms this week.
In one fell swoop, literally, Durban brushed aside centuries of dramatic Cape storms with impunity, and achieved it in such a concentrated time as to render our payoff line a bit deceitful.
On Tuesday, near cycloneforce winds ripped through Durban with unprecedented savagery. While hundreds of trees were being uprooted (and massive sheets of roof helicoptered through the air at warp speed), the rain fell with almost biblical vengeance.
A modern-day Noah might well have thought it the cue for the second coming, such was the severity of this precipitous burst of precipitation: between 100mm and 150mm in about 30 minutes.
Randomly interesting fact: the most rainfall recorded in a 24-hour period occurred on Reunion Island in 1966, when 1 825mm (six foot in old money) fell in 24 hours. If the Durban rain continued to fall like that for 24 hours, this record would easily have been eclipsed. About 5 000mm would have been recorded.
I am happy to report it didn’t. What happened was enough. The weather came, say Durban residents like my friend Mike Frew, with a bang. Literally.
Now we all know – especially old hands at surfing on the East Coast – that the southwesterly buster can arrive almost like a collision, as though something in the atmosphere snaps.
Well, that’s kind of true. Simplistically, atmospheric pressure builds as strong SW winds from an oncoming low pressure push against the NE flow created by the Indian Ocean High Pressure. The wind pushes up to form a pressure “bubble” that bursts when the “air wall” breaks.
After a sudden easing of the sea-breeze, when the sea smooths off into liquid glass and you settle under your beach brolly, suddenly BOOM! The wind is through, and your brolly is heading for Ballito Bay.
This time, however, it came with much more power as a powerful cutoff low moved rapidly inland. Three surfer friends up that side, Frew, John McCarthy and Jason Ribbink, all say it’s the most extreme weather event they have seen in Durban, and certainly the most intense in the shortest time.
At least six deaths were reported, and a huge container ship was jammed sideways in the harbour mouth, blocking the port of Durban. We have seen the carnage via social media: highways turned into dams, cars floating in brown water, videos of trees uprooted, and hysterical screams of onlookers trying to help motorists stranded in cars as torrents gush overhead.
In that focused peak of the storm, gusts reached 67 knots. Consider that a category one cyclone is 73 kts (135km/h). This was not far off a full blown cyclone, and extremely strong – even by Cape standards.
If we could have just half of that rain, we’ll gladly call you the Bluff of Storms. The FNB Wines 2 Whales is around the corner and by now you’re just starting to peak in your training, with honed muscles, incredible stamina, and unbelievable skills levels