Rainfall

Namibia is a rather arid country. Furthermore the rainfall tends to vary a great deal from one year to the next. Please refer to the Climate/Rainfall part of the Digital Atlas of Namibia by clicking here. According to this the rainfall on Farm Kyffhäuser is between 150mm and 200mm per year and the variation in annual rainfall is between 50% and 60%.

The rainfall measurements for Farm Kyffhäuser are taken at the main house. Click here to see the measured annual rainfall for Farm Kyffhäuser since 1994. Click here to see the measured seasonal rainfall for Farm Kyffhäuser since 1993/94. Since Farm Kyffhäuser lies in a summer rainfall area, the seasonal rainfall is measured from July of a given year to June of the next year.

The average rainfall has indeed been found to be between 150mm and 200mm per annum. See the variation in the average seasonal rainfall and the 3-year average seasonal rainfall here.
The three year averaged rainfall per season measured on the farm has dropped below 100mm per season in 2020 for the first time since 1996.
Seven years with rainfall of less than 100mm per year have been recorded, i.e. 1994, 1996, 2004, 2007, 2016, 2019 and 2020.
Only 36mm of rainfall was recorded in the 2012/13 season. This was the lowest seasonal rainfall since our measurements started on the farm in 1994.
Only 37mm of rainfall was recorded in 2019. The rainfall for the main rain months of Jan-Mar 2019 was 0mm. The total rainfall for the first half of 2019 was 3mm.
The highest recorded rainfall was 500mm for the 2008 calender year. Of this rainfall, a total of 375mm was recorded between January and May and a total of 125mm was measured in November and December.

The three months of January, February and March are the main rainfall months as seen here. Approximately 64% of the annual seasonal rainfall is measured in these months.

Click here to see the variation in measured seasonal rainfall for Farm Kyffhäuser since 1993/94 plotted against the El Niño SST (sea surface temperature) Anomaly. The El Niño SST Anomaly is the difference between the sea water surface temperature in a specific area in the Pacific Ocean and the mean sea water surface temperature in the same area. When the SST Anomaly is greater or equal to 0.5°C it is referred to as an El Niño condition. When the SST Anomaly is less or equal to -0.5°C it is referred to as a La Niña condition. During El Niño conditions it can be seen that the rainfall is below average on Kyffhäuser and during La Niña conditions the rainfall on Kyffhäuser is above average.

The following two images show the predicted precipitation rates and cloud cover for Southern Africa for the next 24 hours courtesy of Kevin Levey of 1stweather.com and customweather.com.

Predicted precipitation rates		Predicted cloud cover

copyright customweather.com		copyright customweather.com

Weather related links