Local weather this past week offered a rather typical example of mid-spring weather.
With active cut-off low pressure cells appearing around the Cape, the resultant airflow towards their cores from the northwest crossed Namibia as usual bringing in moist Congo air. This lead to a wide belt of limited intensity rain across much of the central, northern and eastern parts.
West of this we had typical clear skies, dry air, i.e. excellent holiday conditions for otherwise cloud-bound tourists. But the rumblings of the climate change scenario persist.
With South East Trade Wind flows pathetically weak due to the remote core of this outward airflow, the Equatorial Pacific has warmed even further. With the more remote core now located around 40oS, the Tahiti air pressure weakens. Various forecast models are confident that these conditions will eventually develop into a full-scale El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
But I disagree. What does not fit the ENSO picture is the regular, strong anticyclones tracking  latitudes well south of their normal paths. With core pressures given above 1035hPa and often 5 or more hPa above that mark, the overall ENSO picture is not that convincing.
Normally, summer anti cyclones track latitudes at around 30oS to 35oS ranges. The resulting airflows are termed zonal (west-to-east) and generally limit moist air to enter southern African interior, so the heat persists, developing dry, desiccating conditions.
However, the overall current anticyclonic pressure pattern offers a north-south-north flow within the surface and near-surface airmass.  Thus upper circulations are less likely to be affected by surface heat, but their down-flow feed the surface anticyclones, forcing them further south.
Typically, such upper air cores readily restrict convective activity in the middle and upper air layers but when the main cores are further south than normal, conditions over the interior are more prone to effect of convection and storms may likely develop.

What’s coming
As Thursday dawned, a complex vortex area lay just off the Cape. Such systems build and decay  rapidly as new vortex cells form within the disturbed area. This area is above an unusually warm water patch at the extreme west of the Agulhas current. Anticyclonic movement south of this also does much to foment this vortex activity.
The persistent upper anticyclone above Botswana is also complementary.
As the vortex area departs, upper air trough development west of the sub-continent sets up a renewed train of tropical air southwards.
The time range for this input is delayed further as new forecasts are issued daily. Activity now seems limited to Sunday onward and pushed eastward to cover only the northeastern quarter of Namibia. Tropical air will bring scattered showers again to the central, northern and north-eastern parts but intensities may remain low.