The weather service is balmy

“I’ll tell yer how it be; the rivers will run red with blood until every reptile and fish has been suffocated in the soggy mass, the mountains will roar with hellish flames as if conceived in Beelzebub’s own backyard, swarms of locusts will sweep the countryside devastating everything in their path until the landscape resembles Dante’s journey through hell and purgatory without any hope of paradise, people covered in boils and sores succumbing, forever dying … the rest of the country will be fine and mild to warm with scattered showers in the eastern half of the country … now for your sport … ”

Between the climate change terrorists, known to you as scientists, and the South African Weather Service (SAWS), it’s hard to work out which is the bigger cause for alarm — ignoring all the dire warnings or taking them to heart and suffering a stroke from all the stress.

Last summer the SAWS was predicting a dry December, January and February of biblical proportions.

“Turn on a tap if your conscience will let you,” they warned.

Turns out it rained so hard over that period that the navy were thinking of deploying the submarines — which they had on bricks from the arms deal — to Hillbrow as some sort of competition to the Gautrain.

Unapologetic the SAWS told us that it was the work of good ol’ El Nino.

Thooper.

Perhaps they should think about hiring the Eskom Bullshitter — the guy who makes up the reasons why the power is off even though we all know its load shedding. According to the EB every substation in South Africa has been hit by lightning. It got ugly when we had more reports of lightning strikes on substations than the total number of substations in existence.

Now we are being told that South African weather forecasters who predict severe storms or gales without permission from the authorities could be facing 10 years imprisonment or massive fines in terms of proposed amendments to the South African Weather Service Bill.

This means that independent forecasters presented with severe weather will be forced to think twice before putting out alerts. Worse they will need written permission from a state agency.

Anyone visited a state agency recently?

Would you like to wait for someone at a state agency to actually make a decision and then send it to an independent forecaster after hours or during lunch before you get the severe weather warning?

Apparently the reason why the amendments are being proposed is to guard against inaccurate or hoax warnings that could cause panic.

When the Waterkloof murderers start getting parole, South Africa starts proposing policy at the United Nations or Biff goes out to bat for the Proteas it’s time to panic.

Severe weather warnings, on the other hand, have never presented a problem in the past.

Between the Protection of State Information Bill and this amendment the media will be too afraid to report on anything substantial. Just think of the quandary they’ll be in if there’s a political storm.