South African Floods (6 Dead, 5 Missing)

[Meso]

During last night and into this morning, Wednesday 18th June 2008, a number of stations along the KwaZulu-Natal coast along reported particularly heavy rain. A tabulation of 24 hour accumulated rainfall, ending 08h00 SAST, reflecting the most notable falls, appears below. Note the 382mm of rain at Paddock (substantially surpassing the previous record for the month of June, namely 337mm, which had stood since 1964).
The main mechanism involved was the ridging action of a strong surface anticyclone (with a central pressure of 1044hPa) into the southern Indian Ocean, with subsequent pressure rises and onshore flow along the south-eastern and eastern coastline of South Africa.
Further heavy rain continued at places along the KwaZulu-Natal coast during this morning, with over 74mm being reported in a 4 hour period at Lois Botha Airport (Durban). A commercial 737 airliner apparently skidded on the main runway upon landing and part of its undercarriage sank into the soft, muddy earth adjoining the tarmac, thus effectively closing the airport to traffic. Reports of wash-aways and local flooding were also received from localities such as Pinetown and Margate.
A public warning for heavy rain, alerting the public to this possibility, was issued by the South African Weather Service at 16h00SAST on Monday the 16th, a full 24hrs ahead of the onset of the heavy rain.
The following stations received more than 50mm of rainfall for the 17th.

Source : South African Weather Service

380mm in 24 hours is what in inches... like 15 or so I think?

http://www.weathersa.co.za/Pressroom/2008/kzn_coast.jsp
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/news ... news.shtml
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Afri ... 15,00.html

[shibumi]

Sad....My girlfriend did quite a bit of work out of Durban....it's a nice city...but I am sure some of the flooding coming from the mountains was where many of the shanty towns are located...close to the rivers....

[Meso]

I was also expecting lots of the poor communities to mainly be affected by this,but after seeing the news the heaviest rains seemed to have happened in the suburban areas.Over 10 reported dead now and hundreds homeless