Weather and climate

Weather is what the air is like today or this week: hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or windy. Climate is the average weather pattern of a place over many years. A climate zone is an area with a similar weather pattern.

We describe a place’s climate with words like hot, warm, cool, cold, wet, dry and humid. Humid means the air holds a lot of water vapour, so it feels sticky.

• Durban (east coast): hot, humid summers with lots of rain; mild, dry winters.
• Cape Town (south-west): warm, dry summers; cool, wet winters.
• Johannesburg (Highveld): warm, wet summers with thunderstorms; cold, dry winters with frost.
• Upington (Northern Cape): very hot summers, cold winter nights and little rain all year.

Meerkat tip

Soil type is not an element of weather. Temperature, rain, wind, clouds and air pressure are.

• Wind is air moving from place to place.
• Dark, towering clouds usually bring heavy rain. A thunderstorm forms when warm, moist air rises quickly.
• Fog is a cloud lying on the ground.
• A weather forecast is made by studying weather data.

We have seasons because the Earth’s axis is tilted as it moves around the sun. In South Africa winter is from June to August, and January is usually the hottest month in Gauteng.

• It is warmer near the equator, because sunlight hits it more directly.
• It is cooler high on a mountain, because the thinner air holds less heat.

• Precipitation is water that falls from the clouds: rain, hail (little balls of ice) and snow, which falls on high mountains such as the Drakensberg in winter.
• A weather map in the newspaper, on TV or on a phone uses symbols for sun, clouds, rain and wind, and numbers for the temperature.
• The weather affects our lives: what we wear, whether we play outside, and when farmers plant or harvest.