SA Weather Service issues level 2 warning for Joburg

Heavy rain in Joburg in the past couple of days has left many areas flooded. Picture: Karen Sandison/African News Agency (ANA) Archives

Heavy rain in Joburg in the past couple of days has left many areas flooded. Picture: Karen Sandison/African News Agency (ANA) Archives

Published Dec 13, 2022

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Pretoria – The South African Weather Services (SAWS) on Tuesday moved its warning for the City of Joburg from level 5 to level 2 thunderstorms.

Even though level 2 is not as severe as level 5, the weather service warned that the rain was capable of bringing floods to informal settlements, roads, low-lying areas and bridges.

“(There might be) Difficult driving conditions due to wet roads or pooling of water on roads with possible minor vehicle accidents affecting night drivers. (There is a possibility of) Difficult driving conditions on dirt roads,” it said.

According to the weather service, the rainy conditions will persist throughout the week.

The heavy rains which started last week caused power outages, damaged homes and roads and left electricity infrastructure mangled.

The damage was enough to push Joburg mayor Mpho Phalatse to submit an urgent request to Eskom on Monday for the city to be excluded from load shedding for 72 hours.

This is to allow City Power to work on power lines and infrastructure.

On Tuesday, Environment and Infrastructure Services member of the mayoral committee (MMC) Michael Sun wrote on his Twitter page that the city was hard at work trying to come up with viable solutions to the ongoing power outages.

“We are making progress … Eskom need to come to the party,” he wrote.

IOL