Weather Watch

Short and medium-term weather forecasts

I've seen fire and I've seen rain...

James Taylor

Many resources enable us to stay up to date on the state of our environment. A few basic but popular weather-related tools display on this page. Not only are they fun to use; they pique our interest in their subjects. We relate information gleaned from them to the world about us and, after a short while, we realise that we have become far more aware of the myriad complex natural forces governing our climate, our weather and our surroundings. This sampling and the accompanying links are from reputable websites. Each offers infinitely more information than is shown here and is well worth exploring. Should an image not be up to date, please click the link beneath it. An updated graphic will display in a new tab.

Tokai 36-hour day/night weather forecast

Source: meteoblue

Newlands medium-term weather forecast

Source: meteoblue

Tokai 10-day weather forecast (ECMWF model)

Source: Windy.com

Synoptic chart for the Atlantic and Indian Oceans

Source: Windy.com

Note: The South African Weather Service (SAWS) website continues to give us its regularly updated synoptic chart for the South Atlantic. However, with Eskom load shedding prevalent and likely to persist over the next 18 months, the server is frequently inaccessible or down. Unreliable uptime also affects the SAWS-hosted Lowveld Fire Danger Index, which displays fire danger levels for the country. Should the SAWS server be up, these links should be active and will display the linked content. Generally though, this leaves us reliant on Windy or VentuSky which, in addition to the GFS forecast, offers the ICON and GEM forecast models – but not the European model offered by Windy.

Advanced Fire Information System (AFIS)

View today’s Lowveld Fire Danger Index

NOAA 7-Day GFS 12Z Cycle Outlook for Southern Africa

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC)

NOAA 7-14-Day GFS 12Z Cycle Outlook for Southern Africa