The short answer; “Probably, not at all”.
MyNMB has been charting the Dam Levels for longer than we care to remember.
Our latest set of Dam Levels show dam levels from 2017 and if we look at every year’s progress January to December we see:
In only one year of the 7 – 2018 did the Dam Levels increase January to February.
Incidentally that year also heralded significant inflows during the month of September when Mongameli Bobani staged a ‘coup’ and started serving as the Executive Mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality (August 2018 until December 2019).
From 2017 to 2025 the years in which the December end of the year Dam Levels were higher than the January levels at start of the year were: 2024, 2018, 2020 and 2022.
In all the other years under review the trend was down from January to December.
The earliest month in which dam levels experienced an increase over the previous month was April 2024.
The next three earliest increases over the previous month were September 2018, July 2022 and August 2021.
The highest Dam Levels over the entire period was 84.61% (75.62% Available) at the end of November 2024.
The lowest Dam Levels over the entire period was 10.36% at the end of July 2021.
In 7 years we only had ONE massive inflow of water – in 2018.
SOLUTION: We can only pray for enough rain in February so that, like in 2028, our Dam Levels close out higher than in January. As that seems to be the only outlier indicating massive rains later in the year to fill our dams for the next 6 years.
