Cape Town’s Drought A Year On
By Paul Homewood
This is the first in a short series, looking back on some of the extreme weather events in the last year or tow, which were blamed on climate change.
Reuters were quite clear a year ago that the Cape Town drought was affected by climate change:
Running water in the port city of 4 million has been affected by a wider pattern of climate change seen around the country including the Western Cape, where Cape Town is located, the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape provinces.
As was the Western Cape Premier:
As I showed last February, the drought, while exceptionally severe, was not unprecedented.
But how are things looking at the end of 2018? After all, it had been claimed that such droughts would become much more common.
According to the official data from the City of Cape Town, water levels in the local dams have recovered strongly since this time last year, more than doubling in volume.
Indeed they now stand at the highest level since 2014.
Of course, part of the recovery is down to water rationing. Water usage has been reduced by roughly 400 Ml/day in the last year.
However, this would only equate to 146,000 Ml in the year, whereas water storage has increased by 305,000 Ml. In other words, over half of the increase is due to above average rainfall.
WCWSS projections now show that the dams will be virtually full by next October, assuming continued restrictions on consumption:
Higher rainfall this year is, needless to say, merely weather, just as the three previous dry years were.
It will take many more years of observation to determine whether the Cape’s climate really is changing to a more arid one.
Unfortunately the climate mafia will continue to use weather events to sell their climate change scare.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Its difficult not to be a conspiracy theorist when looking at GHCN rainfall data, which now has only ONE current station (the airport) in the Cape Town area, but note the following from CSAG:
“Note that Cape Town Airport station is no longer included. We get data for that station from GSOD, and these data turned out to be particularly bad this year, with many not reported, or underreported rainfall events. As a result that dataset would give a wrong impression of the current conditions.”
http://www.csag.uct.ac.za/current-seasons-rainfall-in-cape-town/
The conspiracy is that GHCNv2, the primary source of rainfall data available to the public, is no longer providing enough data to allow the public to check the pronouncements of the climate priesthood.
Confabulation weather with climate is an age old trick of the warmists, backed by the MSM et al. The moment I read the words: “due to climate change” or equivalent I switch off interest in the conclusions except to note the invalidities in the article in question, where I can.
I’m sure avid gardeners here will put me right, but don’t a lot of the succulents and drought resistant plants found in UK garden centres come from the Cape region?
I’ve always laughed at the perma-drought idiots spewing climate change nonsense because inevitably Mother Earth returns to her median normal. We like to think we’re so smart and control the entire planet, yet we’re powerless against pretty much everything. What we are is impatient and desiring a middle “pleasant” that simply doesn’t exist.
Great news for Capetownians that the rains have returned to their beautiful city.
Has anybody got access to the monthly rainfall records at SA Astronomical Observatory since 2000? This station, located in suburban Capetown and previously known as Royal Observatory, has rainfall records available since 1850 and therefore provides an amazing basis for the assessment of long-term rainfall variation in the SW Cape. I have approached SAWS but they are unwilling to release the data to me. Can anybody help?
I have the Royal Observatory monthly rainfall data from 1850 to 2000, but none since then.
When ‘climate change’ can cause anything, anything is consistent with ‘climate change.’