September is here and the trees know it, for the past 3 or so weeks the oak skeletons have started getting dressed for summer again and already in the first 2 weeks of September many of the trees are covered in fresh green leaves. Most who live in the Western Cape know that September doesn't mean the end of cold weather though and snow is possible right into October, with some of the strongest historic storms occurring in September, it's generally the transitional period between seasons where cut-off lows tend to impact South Africa the most.

Johannesberg and other areas in the north also saw their first thunderstorms of the season this past week, conditions which many of the weather forecasters had missed. The weather in the Cape on the other hand is still pretty wintery with temperatures hovering around 20'C still and light rain still occurring quite often. On the subject of rain, this continues to be a very dry winter and with Spring upon us I fear we may find ourselves in a position of drought in the upcoming months.

Internationally, the tropics have been fairly quiet and while a La Nina has developed meaning storms are more likely to form as shear values tend to be lower, the amount of troughs passing off the USA means there is also an increase in 'fish storms', and while many feel it's a taboo to want a landfalling hurricane, I will openly state that I find majority of fish storms extremely boring and I'm hoping for some action soon.

On the note of natural disaster impacts, I have gone ahead and added a new area to the site called "News Feed", this RSS feed will provide you with extremely up to date information on natural disasters around the world, from earthquakes to hurricanes and even wild fires, as can also be seen below: