Harare — THE Sadc Regional Climatic Outlook Forum has built up an enviable record over the past few years of being able to make fairly accurate predictions of the next Southern African rain season.

Unfortunately not all decision makers and farmers have taken these forecasts to heart. There has been a tendency to reject what is seen as bad news.

This is wrong.

The scientists who make up the forum are all professional meteorologists who, between them, have built up ever more accurate models of how global weather conditions are likely to affect Southern Africa.

Wishful thinking, political considerations, farming needs, business desires, and other extraneous matters have no impact on their work. They tell it as they see it.

That said, these same scientists are careful with their long-term seasonal forecasts.

They make say the rains across a particular band of Southern Africa will be above normal. What they cannot say, at least in August or September, is whether there will be storms in January, or a prolonged dry spell preceded and succeeded by heavy rain so that the average will be above normal over three months.

And they hedge their predictions with percentage degrees of certainty, as they must. Weather and climate forecasting is a statistical science, and it looks as though it will always remain one. Complex mathematical models giving 100 percent accuracy are now regarded as impossible, not just merely very difficult to construct. So the predictions are not certain, but they are the way to bet.

Last year the forum reckoned the rains in Zimbabwe would be reasonable in the first half of the season but be below normal in the second half over much of the country.

Farmers who planted early and used either supplementary irrigation or short-season varieties did well. Those who dismissed the forum and thought it would be all right when the time came found they were wrong. The rains did taper off sharply in the second half.

For the coming season Zimbabwe is likely to blessed, with better rains, especially in the second half.

We hope planners will this year work far more closely with the Zimbabwean weather experts, who sit in this forum and this year hosted it, so that the country can take advantage of what looks like a decent season.

Farmers will still have to choose crops and varieties suited for their area. Good rains do not mean that Beitbridge will produce decent stands of maize. But once that is done it looks as though investment in land preparation, fertiliser and suitable seed will pay for itself. It is, admittedly, easier to accept good news than bad news, but both need planning to take advantage of better conditions and ameliorate the effects of worse conditions.

This is important when we look at the second half of the forecast. The forum and the Zimbabwean contingent gave warnings.

The coming season is likely to see flooding in the Zambezi Valley, which seems to happen every year but which might be worse this coming season.

The time is obviously coming when communities who seem to have to be rescued every year need to be relocated. Even in Muzarabani there must be fairly safe places that can be used for housing, and the annually-flooded plains used for suitable crops and pastures.

Zimbabwe is fairly good at dealing with emergencies when they happen, but it would be better if civil defence authorities and others worked out ways to avoid the emergency in the first place.

Health hazards will also be greater in a wetter season.

Malaria mosquitoes will have more pools to breed in, and we presume it will be easier for waterborne diseases such as cholera to spread.

This implies that the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare might have to start spraying a bit earlier and will need to warn people of all the threats, so that they can be treated in time.

As time moves on Zimbabwe's meteorologists should be able, in collaboration with regional and international colleagues, to refine the forecasts.

Let this year see the start of a far closer collaboration between planners and weather experts so that Zimbabwe can take full advantage of good rains, make suitable plans if droughts are predicted, and cannot just deal with disasters but even take adequate advance steps so floods need little action.