Low temperature damages crops in Mkushi

THE low temperature recently experienced in Mkushi has damaged crops, district meteorological officer Erick Kamona has said.

In an interview, Mr. Kamona said the zero degrees Celsius recorded on July 25, had affected crop growth in some parts of the district.

Mr. Kamona said the district experienced such temperatures way back in 2008 as compared to the past years but that generally the temperatures had been good and the district did not experience so much frost.

“We had good temperatures except on a few days when we had low temperatures. We had lowest on July 25, which was about zero degrees, of course, surrounding areas had some crops damaged,” he said.

Mr. Kamona also said he was facing challenges in gathering information from the 11 meteorological stations dotted in the district due to lack of transport.

He said he was running the station alone and that it was proving difficult to manage operations.

Mr. Kamona said he was, however, able to gather information from nearby stations such as Munsakamba and Masansa through phone text messages.

But that was not enough because he needed to be at stations physically to observe how equipment was performing to avert misinformation.

Mr. Kamona said the office was updated with information and appealed to end users such as farmers to freely visit the office to get relevant information in preparation for the farming season.

“We had good temperatures except on a few days when we had low temperatures. We had lowest on July 25, which was about zero degrees, of course, surrounding areas had some crops damaged.’’