By Ziyah News Reporter
Harare- Zimbabwe and the rest of her SADC peers can heave a sigh of relief if rainfall forecast for the region in the coming rain season is anything to go by. The rainfall outlook as provided by the Southern Africa Regional Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF-29) held in Harare shows the region has effectively kissed goodbye to the ElNino and bracing itself for a weakened LA Nina – meaning more rainfall.
The rainfall forecast which coincides with the main agricultural season in the region signals good news for farmers who bore the brunt of the ElNino induced drought writing off most of the on irrigated crops in the 2023/24 summer cropping season.
“Bulk of the SADC region is likely to receive normal to above-normal rainfall for most of the period of October to December (OND) 2024 including Mauritius and central Madagascar, apart from north-western part of Democratic Republic of Congo where above-normal rainfall is expected. The remainder of the region is likely to normal to below normal rainfall during this period of the 2024/25 season including the island states of Comoros and Seychelles,” read a statement from SARCOF.
For the OND period, most parts of Zimbabwe are expected to be in the normal to below normal rainfall category except for parts of the Western, Southern partly Northern most areas of the country. However more good news await for the period January to March as the whole country is anticipated to get normal to above normal rainfall.
“The period January to March (JFM) 2025 is expected to have normal to above normal rainfall for most of the region except for, south-western fringes of South Africa, south-eastern and western most of DRC, north-western Angola, Tanzania, northern Zambia, northern Malawi, northern Mozambique and central western tip of Madagascar where normal to below-normal rains are expected including Comoros and Seychelles. Northern Madagascar is likely to receive above normal rainfall during this period of the 2023/24 rainfall season.”
SARCOF also provided the temperature outlook for the entire 2024/25 rainfall season which a are expected to be mostly above long-term averages over the whole SADC region.