Category: learning curve

Stage 4 and up in Cape Town – what does it look like?

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Much alarm, but no real surprise, as the message came through that we can expect Stage 6 (six) loadshedding this evening.

Loadshedding – or rolling blackouts – is the process by which the country cuts off power to different areas at different times because there isn’t enough electricity to go around. The alternative would be not cutting areas off and literally overloading the grid, leading to uncontrolled blackouts and general Armageddon. You can’t just switch the grid back on after an uncontrolled blackout. We could be down for days or weeks.
Oh, and each stage represents 1000MW that we’re short of what we require. So to be missing 6000MW is quite something.

It’s not a good scenario.

In Cape Town’s 23 loadshedding areas, each loadshedding period lasts for 2 hours, plus an additional half hour during which the power is restored. You might get one loadshedding block per area in a Stage 1 or 2 day, and up to three blocks per area in a Stage 3 or 4 day. But once you get beyond that, it gets a bit different.

So what does life in Cape Town beyond Stage 4 look like?

Yes, it’s complicated, but there are plenty of timetables readily available. If you have electricity to be able to access them, of course. It pays to be prepared.

And it pays to cut your electricity usage when you have it. If we were all to do that, we might be able to reduce demand. But even then, it’s all very much out of our hands.

Fugly situation.

Tough questions

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I’ve somehow ended up watching Tipping Point on TV this evening.

It’s a quiz show, but I have to say that the questions aren’t exactly taxing. I’ve just had to watch the contestants struggle with the rather difficult:

When written in the English language…

(It’s a British show full of British people, by the way.)

…how many of the four seasons…

(They had to remind them that there were four.)

…begin with the letter S?

I was amazed at Carole’s speed at hitting the buzzer, if slightly less impressed at her answer of “one”.
Clearly, in her haste, she’d forgotten about Summer and Sautumn.

Right, I would write more, but my mind is otherwise occupied with this vexing puzzle which has just been thrown out there:

Which three letter word is another word for frozen water?

Fortunately, I’m not playing the game in the studio like the poor contestants, so I’m going to fire Google up and see if it can help.

Well halo there

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The weird, pre-frontal weather continues here in Cape Town. Today, it’s 27oC with a gale force Northeasterly wind. There were already leaves everywhere, this being the end of the autumn, but now they’re all over the house as well.

And looking up, this huge halo around the sun. This isn’t because the sun is particularly angelic: it’s actually a fairly common phenomenon due to ice crystals in the earth’s upper atmosphere.

Halos around the sun or moon are said to be a sign of approaching bad weather, which fits for us in Cape Town today: indeed, I’ll be getting a quick braai in this evening, using some of the offcuts from the big wooden boat that our neighbour is building. And because these halos are due to the ice in high, thin cirrus or stratocirrus clouds, which do often appear before bad weather, this seems reasonable. However, high, thin cirrus or stratocirrus clouds can also appear before any other sort of weather too, so perhaps this phenomenon only portends stormy conditions when its observers choose to remember the times that it was actually accurate.

Snap’n’Ping

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The calf has been tested by walking a lot. And that includes Forest Drive (the posh one in Bishopscourt, not the crappy one in Pinelands) which is 100m of going upwards in 650m of going forwards (mainly upwards and forwards).

So today a gentle jog around the neighbourhood seemed in order. And off I went.
Bit of uphill – lovely. Bit of flat stuff – lovely. Bit of downhill – lovely. Finally!

But still taking things slowly because I’m older and wiser than I used to be.

And then I jogged down Oak Avenue (the one with the dead cat) and just as I got to the bottom there was a twangy poppy snappy ping and some pretty nasty pain from my left leg, and now I had a couple of kilometres and the best part of 100m to climb before I was home – with a mashed calf.

It probably didn’t help.

And so ice packs and drugs have been the order for the afternoon (plus some Deep Heat, because who doesn’t want to smell like a Frenchman’s groin?).

I think I need to chat to my physio next week.

Early days, but…

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A bit of a heads up: the weather from Sunday evening in and around Cape Town is looking decidedly wintery.

Properly nasty stuff, and a far cry from today’s balmy bergwind-assisted 28C.

I’ve stocked up with half a ton of fire and braai wood, not just because we might want to pollute the atmosphere keep warm next week, but also so that the skink in the woodpile has a bit more shelter when the storm does hit. Got to think of the nature, right?

This one (the storm, not the skink) seems not just to be the biggest one of the year so far, but will also feature a series of cold fronts one after the other, prompting worries that any damage early on could be compounded and exacerbated by the following few days.

It’s still all at least five days away though, so nothing is set in stone just yet. But it might be worth clearing out your gutters and sheltering your skink just so you’re all prepared.