NEWS equipped to handle heavy rain . Flash floods and overflowing ephemeral rivers posed problems for much of January .
“ It has been a good year for sure , even across into Botswana and South Africa ,” wrote Frank Eckardt , a researcher at the University of Cape
Town . “ We had similar good rains in 2000 and 2011 . There is a periodicity to it , which is essential for replenishing surface and groundwater storage . It will also provide much grazing for livestock and , later , biomass for burning . By April the rains will be gone .”
He noted , however , that the region has been getting drier over the long term .
Footnote
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin , using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS
LANCE and
GIBS / Worldview .
Figure 2 : The map is derived from Terra data and shows changes in the “ greenness ” of the landscape in February 2021 compared to the 20-year average for the month .
Grassroots Vol 21 No 1 March 2021 44