Citing specific examples, explain four climatic hazards experienced in Kenya.

Floods: This is the unusual covering of an area, by water, through a temporary rise in the river, lake or sea level. A river floods when its channel is unable to accommodate the discharge from its catchments. Floods mainly occur in lowland regions adjacent to high rainfall highlands. The high rainfall received in the highlands increases the volume of the rivers so much that by the time they reach their old age stage they overflow their banks. The process is accelerated if there is deforestation taking place in the uplands exposing the soils to rain wash. The eroded material is carried downhill and deposited in the banks of the river at the old age stage. Where deposition is extensive much of the river water spills over the banks to find their way into the plains. The flood plain of a river may be extended into the sea by the formation of deltas.
In Kenya flooding is common in the low lying areas served by rivers Nyando, Nzoia, Kuja and Tana. River Nyando, for example, originates from the Nandi hills and is responsible for the annual flooding of Kano plains between the months of March and May. The floods displace people and destroy property.
Floods in Kenya also result from poor environmental management. These include deforestation, blocked urban drainage and cultivation along river banks. Deforestation can cause flash floods, soil erosion and sedimentation of reservoirs. Floods resulting from blocked drainage systems are common in major urban centers like Nairobi and Mombasa. Some of the worst floods recorded in Kenya Uhuru floods of 1961-1962 and the 1997-1998 el-nino floods.
The floods in Kano plains have, however, been seen as a blessing in disguise in that they bring a lot of fertile volcanic soils from Nandi hills which are deposited on the flood plains as silt. During floods fish swim upstream from lake Victoria into the plains. Consequently, the people of Kano plains catch a lot of fish with the advent of floods.
The devastating effects of floods can be controlled in various ways. These include avoiding the floods (evacuation and resettlement), land use zoning regulations, building of dams and dykes, reforestation and planting of other vegetation cover along river banks and improving and diverting channels to avert floods.

-Winds: Powerful like Tropical Cyclones cause havoc in the environment over which they prevail. The cyclones are formed by depression (areas of low pressure). Waterspouts cause turbulence in the inland water bodies such as lakes. In Kenya, they have destroyed buildings (e.g. carrying away of classroom roofs), capsizing boats and destroying fishermen’s nets in lake Victoria.

-Drought: Deficiency of water in the ground, stream, lakes and reservoirs resulting in prolonged deficiency of rain for example, the drought experienced in the year 1984.


-Lightning: This is a visible electrical discharge in form of a flash. Lightning may occur within a single cloud, cloud to cloud or cloud to ground. During the formation of a thunderstorm, electrical discharges take place. The earth’s surface is negatively charged while the atmosphere is positively charged. Lightning is associated with convectional rainfall and is experienced in regions that are intensely heated during the day, resulting in rapid transport of heat by convection in the atmosphere. This creates a severe mix-up of the heated air leading to thunder that is caused by collision of the charged molecules, a process leading in lightning. Lightning is disastrous, destroys property and lead to loss of life among other things. Hence there is need to provide protection where the likelihood of lightning is greater than normal. Regions prone to lightning in Kenya include the west of Rift Valley (especially Kisii and Nyamira districts), Kakamega and the lake Victoria region.
To control lightning disasters, the government of Kenya has taken the following measures: (a) establishment of a commission whose duty is to educate the people on dangers of lightning and how they can avoid the disaster. (b) Ministry of education has provided posters designed to educate people on precautionary measures against lightning. (c) Installation of lightning arresters in schools within the lightning prone areas.

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maurice.mutuku answered the question on August 16, 2019 at 05:55