MetLink Report 29 Jan 1999
Day 5)

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School Weather News 1999

Weather analysis - 29 Jan 1999


From: education@royal-met-soc.org.uk
Subject: MetLinkInternational Day 5
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 22:37:23 -0000

Dear MetLink friends

What a difference a day makes! Yesterday, the weather seemed idyllic on Tristan da Cunha. Then up crept a weak front and gave our friends at St Mary's School some rain overnight! Today, they had 8 oktas of cloud. The high pressure they enjoyed yesterday (the South Atlantic subtropical anticyclone) has slipped away eastwards and Tristan da Cunha is now close to fronts and small areas of low pressure. These fronts are attached to an area of low pressure (984 mb) west of Bouvet Island, which (at 54 deg 26 min South 3 deg 24 min East) is well to the south-east of Tristan da Cunha (37 deg 6 min S 12 deg 20 min W).

Over southern Africa, the satellite images show lots of fuzzy white patches, indicating cumulonimbus clouds, which is pretty typical of late January in this part of the world. Peterhouse found 21 mm of rain in their gauge this morning. The wettest places in southern Africa appear to have been Mozambique and Natal. Like yesterday, a broad coastal strip of Namibia had virtually no cloud. Once again, I wonder if a sea breeze circulation was responsible?

Zimbabwe, Zambia and Madagscar: please will you give us statistics of average temperatures of average temperatures and rainfalls in January for your parts of the world?

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RESPONSE TO ZAMBIA RAINFALL QUESTION >>>>

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 19:41:46 -0000

Here is a response to a question I asked in my report on Day 5. It's from Augrey Malambo, Banani School, in Zambia.

A word about average temperatures and rainfall in January in this part of the world. Zambia is a warm country and hence average daily temperatures at this time of the year are around 23/24 degrees. The normal day temperatures average around 26 degrees while night temperatures are around 17 degrees. Rainfall in a day averages 20 mm, particularly in the northern parts of the country where it is not abnormal to have over 60 mm in a day. Some places even have higher rainfall readings at this time of the year particularly between January and February when the ITCZ is either over Zambia or further in the south. The southern parts of the country including the valley areas such as the Zambezi and Luangwa valleys, however, are drier comparatively.

When the rains are this high at this time of the year, many parts of the country experience many problems in terms of transport. Roads become impassable because of mud in places without tarred roads (rural areas particularly) and in urban centres the roads develop big pot holes that at times are only filled in or mended after the rainy season. This problem is already common this season because the country seem to have received more rains than in the past few years (this is according to the weather reports on TV and radios, and personal visits to various areas of the country). We truly don't know what our roads will look like by the time the rains end at the end of March or beginning of April. On the part of farmers, complaints are that the high rains received so far are destroying crops because the fertility of the soils has been drastically affected despite applying chemical and biological manures. Please take it that, on the overall, Zambia is wetter this year than the past few years.




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The ITCZ was quite well defined today (see DTOT Meteosat Image below), but notice how patchy it was. It's never as continuous as shown in the text books.

As the observations from Tarragona and Malta show, the weather over the western part of the Mediterranean today has not been as nice as the summer holiday brochures show. There were cool west or north-west winds and, for Malta, showers and quite strong winds, which reached gale force at times. The area of low pressure which was centred over the Ligurian Sea a few days ago is now centred over the Ionian Sea, between Sicily and Greece. Thus, it is centred not far to the east of Malta.

Pressure has been rising over the British Isles, to more than 1030 mb, but that has not brought much sunshine. Indeed, there has been a lot of mist, cloud and drizzle from weak fronts. During my drive back to Cardiff from Reading this afternoon (1530-1730 GMT), I had to use the windscreen wipers of the car almost all the way, because of drizzle. The wettest parts of Europe today appear to have been Switzerland, southern Germany, Rumania and western Bulgaria, and snow has fallen over western Russia.

The weather has not been quite as cold in northern Finland and northern Sweden today as it was yesterday, but it has still been bitterly cold by most people's standards. The flow of air from the east appears to be weakening, however, to be replaced by air from the west. I therefore expect much higher temperatures than of late to be reported from Finland and Sweden in the next few days. Perhaps the cars will soon stop behaving like kangaroos!!

That's all for today. I look forward to receiving your observations next week.

Best regards Malcolm




DTOT Meteosat Image 29 Jan 1999





N Atlantic synoptic chart 29 Jan 1999







S Atlantic synoptic chart 29 Jan 1999




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