Mother of all Storms to hit KZN Coast – NOT
March 19th, 2007
Update 2007/03/22
For those of you readers who found their way to this post looking for storm pictures / images of the storm damage in and around Durban, here are some links:
- Kevin has a great collection on his blog
- East Coast Radio has quite a few on their newswatch page, including a few videos (site seems to be suffering at times from the load so may be slow)
- Amatomu’s list of posts tagged with “Durban” (we’re back on the map – temporarily :-)
IOL claim that the mother of all storms is approaching the KwaZulu-Natal coastline right now – only it isn’t.
Durban hospitals are filling up with storm victims as rescue and emergency services prepared for “the mother of all storms”, expected to hit the KwaZulu-Natal coastline at about 6pm on Monday.
Unusually high waves (spring tide and weird weather combined) last night did plenty of damage – see Kevin’s Arbitrary Thoughts for pics – and the province has recently been battered by unusual storms (some pics of my own from storm damage further inland) – but there is no monster storm approaching. This is either sensationalist news reporting by IOL (shame on you) or IOL getting suckered by a hoax email (even more shame on you). Sensationalist news sells, but this is pathetic.
East Coast Radio are also telling listeners not to panic and evacuate unless emergency services tell them to do so (apparently some Nedbank Durban staff left early for home expecting to have to board up windows etc :-) Waves are still high (8-10 feet, high tide was just after 16h00) and damage is being done, but it’s “not the end of the world” to quote the news announcer. Easy for me to say, I don’t own beach front property!
I must have received 10 emailed copies of the new report so far, all fuelling the panic.
SA Weather has issues an alert, but it definitely isn’t a monster storm warning:
Very rough seas, with wave heights in excess of 5 metres, are expected between Port Elizabeth and Maputo,moderating from the south.
and the warning looked like this an hour or so ago:
Very cold conditions are expected to persist in the eastern interior of the Eastern Cape. Strong to gale force south-westerly winds are expected between East London and Cape St Lucia, moderating from the south. Very rough seas, with wave heights in excess of 5 metres, are expected between Port Elizabeth and Maputo. High seas, with wave heights in excess of 7 metres, are expected along the southern KwaZulu-Natal coast at first. Strong to gale force easterly to south-easterly winds are expected in places between Cape Point and Cape Agulhas. Conditions favourable for the development of runaway fires are expected in places over the Cape Peninsula.
Posted in Local
4 Responses to “Mother of all Storms to hit KZN Coast – NOT”
Leave a Reply
its no hoax. do u live in maritzburg? structures that have been around for 20 years have been washed away
I couldn’t agree more. Given, Thursday evening was rather hectic, but the “storm” alert is nothing more than wind! Anyway, cool blog! Keep it up Mr. McPhail…
Not a hoax Stev, just bad sensationalist reporting on the part of IOL – at 6pm last night when this “mother of all storms” was supposed to hit there was no storm, no rain, only a truly beautiful sunset (and a fair amount of wind). Wave height was dropping too.
How can “the mother of all storms” be approaching, when the weather bureau isn’t predicting rain?
And thanks for the kind words Jaco, long time no chat :-)
You Were Looking for… what?
Inspired by Kyknoord’s "You were looking for" post, I present a list of popular or just interesting search phrases / keywords people use before stumbling on this blog. Almost 80% from Google (more than half of those Google Images),…