Behold The Fetch

If you are currently residing in Cape Town, you cannot have failed to notice the somewhat extreme meteorological conditions that are prevailing this morning. The rain – and there’s a lot of rain – is travelling horizontally past our windows, assisted in no small part by the ridiculously strong and blustery northwester. It’s dark, it’s grey – dark grey – and it’s cold. Cold, dark grey.

Winter. She is here.

But where did this remarkable weather come from, I hear you ask. Well, here’s your answer: :

This was the situation at midnight last night. Now, ten hours later, Cape Town (central, “helpfully” indicated by a tiny red dot) has slipped underneath that pointy line indicating a phat cold front, linked to those double-barrel low pressure centres. And that’s why we’re getting what we’re getting right now.

But, while windguru is predicting swells of up to 7 metres for the Cape coast this weekend (and that lengthy fetch shows you why), any avid surfers will probably be disappointed, as Spike from wavescape indicates:

Gather yer nuggets Wednesday as rising 12ft beasts smack thy chops stukkend. Dik SSW surf swells in glassy sea > light NW. Epic. FB 3′ early, 4-5′ in arvi. Cooks.Thursday neargale NW smelts 10′ mess, FB 4′ in stiff offshores. By lunch, strong SW thro. DIK RAIN drench from 8am. Friday heaving 5-10′ storm sea, ragged SW winds > S. Heavy squalls subside a bit. C-c-cold. FB ragged side going onshore. Saturday heaving 5-10′ storm junk in strong S > SSE. FB kak. Sunday lekker calm, leftover 3-5′ S swell. FB fun 3′.

Thanks for that, Spike. Lucid as ever. Consider my chops smacked stukkend.

The forecast for the weekend does suggest that things will calm down a little, although if you were expecting a hefty tan by Monday morning, you may be barking up the wrong country.

Me? I’ll be heading down to Cape Agulhas, where those mad swells will hopefully bring some mad photo opportunities.
And yes, I’ll be taking my thermals along with me…

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