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[i]Originally posted by Tony Weaver[/i]
[br]Hi Warren,

Here's the latest on the flooding from this morning (see also my comments at the end):

MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP) _ Mozambican authorities say about 800 people are trapped by rising floodwaters and in need of rescue.
Mozambique’s National Disaster Management Institute said that three districts in the central Zambezi valley have been cut off due to worsening floods.
The 800 people awaiting rescue have been trapped since Tuesday.
The government is evacuating approximately 130,000 people living on the banks of three main rivers in central Mozambique, after the flood alert level was raised to “red” on Tuesday.
Two people have died in the floods since the end of February.
Disaster management official Luis Pacheco says the situation may worsen with the opening of floodgates on several dams, including one in Zambia.

As of yesterday, the Zambezi at Katima was at 6.15 m compared to the average of 3.85 m. Same time last year it was at 5.74m according to the Nam department of Water Affairs (I got this off a post on the overland forum).

I'm not sure where you can get accurate info, but try Googling Namibian Water Affairs etc, bearing in mind that a lot of the Zambezi's water comes from the rest of the catchment area (Angola is also having floods as we speak).

When I did part of the upriver expedition in rubber ducks with Kingsley Holgate some years ago (I went as far as the Cahora Bassa gorge), the river was still pumping in May, but it dropped fast and we were constantly getting hung up on sand banks further upstream. If you are going to be kayaking the gorge, find out from the engineers at the dam if they have any plans to open the sluice gates. They opened them while we were camped in the gorge and the river rose about five vertical metres overnight!

Here's an extract from a piece I wrote about the expedition for Out There magazine:

Ahead of us now lay the last, and most formidable obstacle on the Mozambican leg of the Zambezi -- the rapids and cataracts of the Cahora Bassa gorge. Refuelling at Tete and leaving David Gcwensa at a base camp at the 1890 Boroma Mission, we headed upstream.

The river grew narrower and narrower, the rapids faster and whiter. Late in the afternoon, we set up camp on a crescent shaped sand bank.

Then the river began to rise, and rise, and rise.

Right through the night we hauled the boats higher and higher until eventually they were moored just below the camp -- the river had risen, we guessed, some 15 feet overnight, nearly five metres. Later we met some Portuguese engineers from the dam. That night they had opened a new floodgate and were pumping 1,2-million litres of water a second into the river.

Dawn broke on an extraordinary sight: Rock islands which stood - and exposed the night before were now all but submerged. The river had widened to become a raging torrent, sand banks were collapsing with explosive force into the flood waters.

Tony

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