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Abigail Mawonde Herald Correspondent
The Meteorological Services Department (MSD) has explained the current cold spell, saying its because the country is in a transition from summer to winter.

The country has been experiencing a cold spell since the beginning of last week. MSD told The Herald there were a series of High Pressure Systems (HPS) affecting the country in the past 10 days.

“An intense High Pressure System, which moved from the Atlantic Ocean, progressing eastwards towards the Indian Ocean, is currently influencing the weather over Zimbabwe,” said the department.

“The system started affecting us on Wednesday until today (Friday) (last week) and it is in the Indian Ocean moving further east. This is a normal feature as we are transitioning from summer season to winter.”

MSD said the rainfall season had officially ended.

“Officially, the summer rainfall season for Zimbabwe ends on 31 March of each year,” it said.

“However, post rains are received in April.

“Generally, they are less in amount and poor both in temporal and spatial distribution compared to the peak season rainfall received between December-January-February.”

MSD further explained that the HPS generally stir cool and moist south easterlies, resulting in cloudy, windy, subdued temperatures and light rain in places and this is characteristic of winter weather.

There are two main seasons in Zimbabwe – summer and winter.

“Thus, since summer has ended officially, then we should be getting into winter – subdued temperatures, cloudy conditions sometimes with sunny breaks and at times windy conditions should prevail,” said the MSD.

It said the weather would briefly change this weekend.

“This system has passed and we should be seeing more of sunny conditions. However, Sunday evening (yesterday) into Monday (today), another HPS should be affecting weather over Zimbabwe again,” it said.

“Generally, it is expected to be less intense than what we experienced this week (last week).”