Prepare Before the Rain: The Coming Super El Niño and Zimbabwe’s Climate-Resilience Reckoning
The storm does not begin when the rain falls. It begins months earlier — when the roof already leaks, the culvert is blocked, the spillway uninspected, the wrong crop planted. A rare, dangerous ocean pairing is forming over the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and Southern Africa sits directly in its path. This journal explains the science, names the risks, and gives every family, farmer, school, council and company a checklist to act on — before the clouds gather.
This is a predictive preparedness journal, filed jointly in our Environmental & Conservation series and the SADC Journal — because the danger it describes respects no border. It is written for everyone: every person in power, every family, every farmer, every school, every community that looks after the vulnerable, everyone who travels the roads, every mine, every commercial farm, every business working the land. Read it, and act on it, before the season turns.
The storm does not begin when the rain falls. It begins months earlier — when the roof is already leaking; when the riverbank has been stripped of vegetation; when the dam spillway has not been inspected; when the farmer has planted a crop that cannot survive the season; when the borehole pump has been failing for months; when the road culvert is blocked; when the wetland has been cultivated; when the grain store is not sealed; when the community has no evacuation route; when nobody knows where the elderly, the children, the livestock or people with disabilities will go. By the time the first torrential rain arrives, it may already be too late. That is why this is issued now, in the dry season — the maintenance season — and not after the first flood.
A Rare and Dangerous Ocean Pairing Is Forming
Zimbabwe enters the 2026/27 season under climate signals that deserve serious attention — not panic, but preparation. Two great ocean systems are aligning at once, and understanding them is the first act of resilience. Let us explain the science plainly, because a warning you understand is one you will act on.
What Is El Niño — and Why “Super”?
Across the vast tropical Pacific Ocean, the surface water is normally cooler in the east (near South America) and warmer in the west (near Asia), held that way by steady trade winds blowing westward. El Niño is what happens when those winds weaken and the warm water sloshes back eastward, spreading unusually warm sea-surface temperatures across the central and eastern Pacific.
That warm ocean pumps enormous heat and moisture into the atmosphere, and because the atmosphere is one connected system, it rewires global rainfall — shifting where storms form and where they don’t. A “super” El Niño simply means an exceptionally strong one. In 2026, sea-surface temperatures in the key monitoring zone are forecast above +2.9°C above average — already hotter, at this point in its life, than the record 1997–98 event, with NOAA giving greater than a 90% chance it reaches “very strong” intensity by late 2026.
For Southern Africa, the historic footprint of a strong El Niño is drier-than-normal conditions — Zimbabwe’s Meteorological Services Department has noted El Niño years carry roughly a 65% likelihood of below-normal rainfall here. That is the drought signal. But it is only half the story.
The Indian Ocean Dipole — the Second Engine
The Indian Ocean has its own version of El Niño, and it matters enormously for us because the Indian Ocean is a major source of the moisture that rains on Southern Africa. The Indian Ocean Dipole, or IOD, is a see-saw of sea-surface temperature between the western Indian Ocean (near Africa) and the eastern Indian Ocean (near Indonesia).
In a positive IOD — which is what is developing now — the western Indian Ocean, closer to East Africa, becomes warmer than average, while the eastern side becomes cooler. Warm water off the African coast changes where the air rises and where it sinks, reshaping the region’s rainfall. Crucially, a positive IOD tends to co-occur with El Niño and can amplify its impacts — intensifying drought and heat in some places while loading other areas with the moisture that fuels violent storms and floods.
So we are not facing one ocean driver. We are facing two, pulling together — the Pacific’s super El Niño and the Indian Ocean’s positive dipole — over exceptionally warm global seas. That combination is precisely why this season demands preparation for both extremes at once.
How a Land Can Be Starved of Water and Drowned in the Same Season
This is the hardest idea in the whole journal, and the most important, so let us walk through it slowly. It sounds impossible: how can the same season bring both drought and destructive floods? Yet it is exactly what this ocean pairing can produce — and understanding why is what keeps a family alive.
Why Drought and Floods Can Strike Together
The key is a single principle: total water availability is not the same thing as rainfall intensity. A season can deliver too little water overall — and still deliver too much, too fast, in a single burst.
Here is how. A strong El Niño tends to suppress the steady, soaking rains that a farming season needs — so week after week passes drier than normal, dams fall, boreholes strain, crops wilt. That is the drought. But the atmosphere is now also loaded with heat and moisture from those abnormally warm oceans. When a trigger arrives — a passing storm system, or the remnants of a tropical cyclone spinning out of the warm Mozambique Channel — that loaded atmosphere can dump an entire month’s rain in a few violent hours.
On ground baked hard by drought, that intense rain does not soak in — it runs off instantly, tearing soil, filling rivers in minutes, washing out roads and bridges, and flooding low-lying homes. So the community gets the worst of both: not enough water for the crops across the season, and far too much water in a single deadly afternoon. Drought weakens the land; the flash flood then strikes the weakened land harder.
The solution is neither “drain everything” nor “dam everything.” Every drop must be captured — but every flood must also be given a safe pathway. That is landscape-level water management: slow the water, spread it, sink it into the soil and store it for the dry weeks — while always leaving a clear, safe route for the violent downpour to escape without destroying homes, roads and lives.
The Danger Is Not One Giant Event — It’s Several Together
Zimbabwe must stop imagining climate disaster as simply “drought.” The real threat is a chain of smaller shocks striking together, each one making the next one worse. A resilient nation plans for the whole chain, not a single link.
Prepare, therefore, for the whole family of hazards at once: drought and prolonged dry spells; extreme heat and crop failure; livestock losses and water shortages; wildfires, invasive pests and crop diseases; food-price shocks; severe thunderstorms, lightning, hail and damaging winds; flash floods and river flooding; erosion, dam failure, and road and bridge failure; contaminated drinking water; power, communications and transport interruptions; rural isolation, displacement — and the economic disruption that follows all of it. This is what a multi-hazard preparedness culture means.
Capture Water. Store Water. Protect Water. Use It Wisely.
If this journal has one central instruction, it is this: water must be stored before it is needed. Rainfall should never simply be allowed to run away from a farm or a home. Every household, school, clinic, farm and community should ask one question before the season: where will the next rainwater go?
Household rainwater harvesting — before the rains
🏠 At every home
- Clean every roof and repair damaged sheets
- Repair or install gutters; direct downpipes into tanks
- Install first-flush diversion systems
- Cover all storage; prevent mosquito breeding
- Inspect tank foundations
- Keep drinking water separate from livestock water
- Build an emergency reserve of treated drinking water
The farm as a water catchment system
A climate-resilient farm is designed so rain is slowed, spread, soaked into the soil and stored. Instead of rain → runoff → erosion → lost water, the goal becomes rain → capture → infiltration → soil moisture → storage → crop and livestock use. Depending on local soils, slope and drainage, farmers can combine farm ponds, earth dams, infiltration pits, swales, contour ridges and bunds, stone lines, check dams, gabions, terraces, grassed waterways and protected springs.
Never build a dam, diversion or major earthwork simply because it looks sensible — poorly designed water infrastructure becomes a hazard during extreme rainfall. Every dam needs a functioning spillway; every spillway needs inspection; every drainage channel needs a safe place for excess water to go. Design to local engineering requirements, not guesswork.
Wetlands Are Infrastructure. Trees Are Infrastructure.
Zimbabwe already owns powerful climate-defence technologies — and many of them are not machines. They are ecosystems. A wetland that soaks up heavy rain and releases it slowly in the dry months is doing, for free, what expensive engineering would struggle to match. This is conservation as survival.
Zimbabwe should establish Natural Defence Zones around rivers, wetlands, dams, springs, steep slopes, gullies, drainage channels, vulnerable roads and community water sources — carefully managing cultivation, settlement and uncontrolled grazing in these areas. Every wetland cultivated, every riverbank stripped bare, is a defence system dismantled just before the storm.
Walk the Ground Now, While It Is Dry
Every rural community should conduct a pre-rainfall drainage inspection — on foot. Walk the settlement, the roads, the fields, around the schools, clinics, dams and bridges. Ask one simple, powerful question at every point: if 100mm of rain fell in a very short time, where would the water go? And then — where would the people go?
🚶 Walk and look for
- Blocked or undersized culverts
- Collapsed or eroded drainage
- Houses built in natural drainage channels
- Settlements too close to rivers
- Damaged bridges and blocked storm drains
- Unstable riverbanks and active gullies
- Trees likely to fall on roads or power lines
- Unstable walls and damaged roofs
Rural roads are disaster infrastructure
A road is not merely a road. In a disaster it becomes an evacuation route, a food-supply route, an ambulance route, a livestock route, an emergency-communications route — an economic lifeline. Before the rains: clear culverts, repair bridges, stabilise shoulders, identify which roads flood first and what the alternatives are, mark dangerous river crossings, and set up a way to warn the community of closures. A community should know which road becomes impassable first — and know the alternative before it is needed.
Prepare for Both Drought and Flood — in the Same Field
It sounds contradictory; it is not. Climate variability means one farmer may face dry → rain → dry → violent storm → dry within a single growing season. So the resilient farmer never relies on a single crop, a single planting date, a single water source or a single income stream.
A crop can survive drought and flood and still be destroyed in storage. Elevate grain above the floor, keep it dry, seal against rodents, monitor for insects, use hermetic storage where available, inspect regularly and separate damaged grain. The harvest you fought the whole season to grow can be lost in the store in a month — protect it as fiercely as you grew it.
Livestock, fire, and storms all need their own plan
Before the season: calculate grazing and water, build fodder reserves, identify livestock evacuation areas, establish shade against extreme heat, and — hardest of all — plan a destocking strategy before animals become severely stressed, because a farmer who waits until cattle are starving has already lost bargaining power. A drought year is a fire year: cut firebreaks, clear dry vegetation around homes, and agree community firefighting arrangements before the grass dries. And treat thunderstorms as serious hazards — secure loose roofing, remove dangerous branches, teach children never to shelter under isolated trees, and seek proper shelter rather than “watching the storm.”
The Zambezi Is a Regional Climate System
Zimbabwe cannot plan alone. Water moves across borders; floods move across borders; drought moves food markets across borders; a single cyclone can strike several countries at once. A cyclone does not have to make landfall in Zimbabwe to flood Zimbabwe. This is why climate resilience must be a SADC project, not merely a national one.
The 30-Day Pre-Rainy-Season Command
Treat the month before the major rains as a national preparedness window. Here is the checklist, by sector — the concrete work that turns warning into safety.
🏠 Homes
- Repair roofs; clean gutters; secure windows
- Inspect wiring; remove dangerous branches
- Raise valuables above flood levels
- Store emergency drinking water and medicines
- Keep torches, batteries, charged power banks
- Keep emergency contacts accessible
🚜 Farms
- Inspect dams and spillways; repair irrigation
- Clean water channels; repair fences
- Prepare seed and drought-resilient crops
- Protect livestock water; prepare fodder reserves
- Establish firebreaks; repair erosion structures
- Inspect grain stores; set up pest monitoring
🛣️ Roads · 🏫 Schools · 🏥 Clinics
- Clear culverts; inspect bridges; mark dangerous crossings
- Identify alternative routes; repair road shoulders
- Schools: inspect roofs, clear drainage, protect water and learning materials, set severe-weather procedures
- Clinics: protect medicines and generators, secure water, arrange emergency transport, prepare for waterborne disease and mosquito exposure
🤝 Communities
- Identify flood-prone households and vulnerable people
- Identify evacuation centres and livestock areas
- Identify water points; establish communication chains
- Conduct community drills; form local emergency committees
Every community should be able to function for at least 72 hours during a major disruption without assuming outside help will arrive immediately. Document, at village level: where emergency water and food come from; where displaced households shelter; which roads stay usable; how to communicate if networks fail; the nearest functioning clinic; what happens when the power goes; where livestock go; who accounts for children during evacuation; and who checks on the elderly and vulnerable.
Every $1 of Early Action Can Save $16
For those who weigh everything in cost: preparedness is not an expense, it is the cheapest insurance a nation can buy. The World Bank’s 2025 Zimbabwe Economic Update estimates that every dollar invested in early, anticipatory measures can save up to US$16 in future disaster costs. Anticipation is not pessimism. It is optimism with a plan — and a balance sheet that favours it.
The trend is not abstract. Droughts in Zimbabwe became substantially more frequent across the last century — from roughly one drought in ten growing seasons in 1902–1979 to about one in four in 1980–2011. The 2023/24 El Niño drought cut Zimbabwe’s maize yield by around 60% against the five-year average. This is a country that can no longer afford a culture of waiting.
Plan for all three seasons at once
The resilient farm — and the resilient nation — is designed to survive all three. And a formal “maximum credible climate stress scenario,” planned for in advance, answers the only question that matters when several shocks hit together: if it happened, how long could we function?
The Greatest Defence Is Not a Wall — It’s a Prepared People
I have written a great deal this season about grief that arrived without warning — a lake disaster, a verdict, lives lost. This journal is different, and that is precisely why it matters to me: here, we have the warning. The oceans are telling us, months ahead, what they are preparing. We do not have to be caught unready. That is a gift disguised as a threat, and I refuse to waste it.
So let me be plain, in the way a relative speaks to family. Do not wait for the river to rise — walk the riverbank now. Do not wait for the dam to fail — inspect it now. Do not wait for the roof to collapse — repair it now. Do not wait for the well to dry — harvest water now. Do not wait for the crop to fail — diversify now. Do not wait for the fire — cut the firebreak now. Do not wait for the flood — clear the culvert now. Do not wait for the disaster response — build the community response now. Everything on that list is cheap, practical, and possible before the first cloud gathers. None of it is possible once the water is already in the road.
And I say this to everyone the storm touches, which is everyone: to the person in power who can fund a culvert or a spillway; to the mining company and the commercial farm whose land shapes where the water runs; to the parent, the teacher, the nurse, the driver, the herder. The greatest climate-defence system Zimbabwe can build is not a wall or a machine. It is a population that is prepared. Preparation is not fear; it is love with its sleeves rolled up — the practical, unglamorous love that keeps a child, a herd, a harvest and a home alive through a hard season. Let this be the year we prepared. Simudzai basa; ngatizvigadzirire tisati tanaiwa — let us raise the work; let us prepare ourselves before the rain.
Before the clouds gather, prepare the land.
Before the rain falls, capture the water.
Before the flood comes, clear the path.
Before the drought comes, store the food.
Before the fire starts, protect the land.
Before disaster strikes, prepare the people.
To every home, every farm, every school, every clinic, every council, every community that shelters the vulnerable, everyone who travels the roads, every mine and every worker of the land — this warning is for you, given in good time and in good faith.
Do not say Tete Getty did not warn you. The oceans have spoken; we have listened; and we have passed the message on while there is still dry ground to walk and time to act. What we do with the warning is now in our hands, together.
Ngatizvigadzirire tisati tanaiwa. Tinovimba ranzwika, ragashirwa. Chakachenjedza ngwena kubuda mumvura. Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo.
Let us prepare before the rain falls. We trust the warning is heard and received. Even the crocodile is warned before it leaves the water. A nation is built by its own people.
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