Gale-force winds pummelled Nelson Mandela Bay on Wednesday, uprooting trees, breaking water pipes and power lines and ripping off at least one suburban roof.
Though the hourly and gust speeds of the howling west-southwester were a little shy of the record, it was yet another episode of prolonged battering, prompting a call for an infrastructure design rethink in the Bay.
Greenshields Park resident Jacqui Verson said a portion of the roof of a building on her property in Sparrow Avenue was torn off by the wind.
“I was sitting in our bedsitter attached to the main house videoing the chaotic wind situation outside to help explain to my son in hospital why I wasn’t going to venture out right then to visit him,” Verson said.
“Next thing there was this horrific rumbling whipping sound, the dogs ran inside and the metal sheeting covering half the roof just flew up.
“It knocked down the swing that my granddaughter uses and some branches of the tree I had been filming.
“Nobody was hurt, thank goodness. The cat has disappeared but we think she is all right.
“It was very scary.
“If it starts raining, the water will pour in but there’s none at least for a couple of days according to the forecast.
“The sheeting that came off is all buckled so it will have to be replaced.
“We will look at the situation properly as soon as the wind has subsided a bit.”
Verson said the experience had shaken her even more because she had been through a similar experience in the late ’90s when a typhoon howled through the family’s resort in Nelspruit — an unheard of phenomenon in the Lowveld — flattening the waterslide and ripping off roofs.
The Herald chief photographer Eugene Coetzee, who was out all day Wednesday, said driving was difficult and dangerous at times.
“Because of the wind bashing you around it was hard to stay in your lane.
“The billboards hanging on the side of the road were being slammed around and the wind got funnelled between the big buildings in some areas and that made things worse.
“The gale was also moving around the containers on the back of trucks and I saw them narrowly miss each other a few times.”
Trees were toppled across the metro, one in the car park of Provincial Hospital in Gqeberha, which landed on a car.
Five were uprooted in Bougainvillea Drive in Linton Grange alone, breaking water pipes and severing power lines.
On the north side of Gqeberha, the ocean swell surged over the dolosse onto the N2 and a container was blown off the back of a truck between Bluewater Bay and the John Tallant off-ramp.
At Kings Beach, even the hard-core open water swimmers had to restrict their dip to a few hundred metres because of the strong currents generated by the wind.
Wildlife and Environment Society of SA Eastern Cape chair r Gary Koekemoer said while Wednesday’s high winds were not an unusual phenomenon in Nelson Mandela Bay, their recurrence was worrying.
“We have had 100km/h winds before but what we are seeing of late and which is concerning is the regularity of these big winds.
“Our buildings are not designed to withstand the consistent beating they are getting and this is going to compel us to change our design assumptions when it comes to housing and other infrastructure.”
He said the increased regularity of extreme winds in the Bay were part of the same climate-change phenomenon that doused the Western Cape in record July rains after the province’s 2015-2018 severe drought.
Forecaster Kevin Ingram at the SA Weather Service’s Gqeberha office said the wind was indeed “very strong”.
“We have an average of 41 knots gusting up to 50 knots, so therefore an average of 75km/h gusting up to 93km/h.
“It’s strongest close to the coastline and weaker but not significantly weaker into the city.
“The wind is lighter as you go further north so at the Port of Ngqura we have an average of 28 knots gusting to 44 knots, which equates to 56km/h gusting to 88km/h.”
He said the wind would start easing steadily through the night.
“By 8am, we will be looking at 10 knots gusting up to 20 knots.”
Weather analyst Garth Sampson of Weather Guru said the gale had begun on Tuesday evening and had increased through the night.
“It was a strong wind but not a record.
“The record for the most powerful wind dates back to 1991 also in August when we had 47 knots average gusting up to 75 knots, converting to 87km/h gusting up to 139km/h.
“PE has always had big winds and in fact we have not had a record for ages.
“The bigger concern in my view is the lack of rain.
“We were well below average in July, we’re heading the same way in August and the rainfall forecast for the rest of the year is not looking good.”
Earlier, an SA Weather Service report said Wednesday would see the Eastern Cape buffeted by level six winds.
“Winds resulting in damage to settlements and coastal infrastructure, dangerous driving conditions and disruptions in ports are expected along the coast between Plettenberg Bay and Port Edward.
“This includes in the Kouga Local Municipality, Nelson Mandela Bay metro, Ndlambe Local Municipality and Ngqushwa Local Municipality.”
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