You occasional/annual (when I remember) reminder that:
“There is snow on the mountains because it is cold.”
NOT
“It is cold because there is snow on the mountains.”
It seems to be a Cape Town old wives tale that the snow on the local mountains is somehow responsible for the chilly temperatures in the city.
Here’s the view from our bedroom (long lens, yes) yesterday.
But this isn’t a tricky “chicken or egg” situation. It get cold and then it snows.
Not the other way around.
Social Media Manager for Eskom being at number 1.
But Social Media Manager for the City of Cape Town must be in at number 2.
Because there’s not enough electricity to go around nationally, the City is obligated to cut its power to certain areas at certain times to reduce the strain on the overall system. There are timetables for that process, and we’ve been through this a lot before on here. And while the national “supplier”, Eskom, has different stages of loadshedding which apply to the rest of the country, Cape Town can use its pumped-storage facility at Steenbras to sometimes lessen the effect of the loadshedding for City customers.
Less so on the weekends, because you can’t just keep creating free energy. That’s not how physics works.
The City tries to provide up to two stages of load-shedding protection where feasible. At the high stages of load-shedding, it becomes more challenging. Over weekends, when the demand is lower, the City often sheds close to the same stage as Eskom to build reserves for the week ahead. It does the maintenance of the Steenbras plant too.
The City then announces or updates its plan via social media and then the people get angry at the City.
Usually, people get angry because they are inconvenienced by the loadshedding that the City has announced, somehow failing to realise that this loadshedding is often less, but perhaps more importantly NEVER WORSE, than for the rest of the country.
What I am saying is that it’s not the City’s fault, but they still get the blame.
And when these people aren’t inconvenienced, because of the City’s intervention?
The City getting a lot more blame this weekend because there’s a big rugby game (URC Final, Stormers v Munster) in Cape Town on Saturday evening, and there is (nationwide) loadshedding. For some reason, people who are going to be loadshod during the game seem to think it’s a personal vendetta by the City, and they’re not happy.
Wouter Swart doesn’t have a single friend whose house he might be able to watch the game at.
And that’s sad.
Ilse Engelbrecht says that she’s in the same boat, but then she gets called out by Lionel. He says that she’s lying, and reminds her that she’s invited round to their place. Looks like Ilse was going to be watching the final with Lionel and she was just after some internet attention.
Yes, Vanessa. Every single TV in Cape Town will be off. There won’t be anywhere with electricity in the whole of the Western Cape. No-one will have a clue what’s going on. As usual.
Come now, Babs. It’s not about tonight’s rugby match. It’s a longer term problem. I’m surprised that you haven’t been aware of it before. And… wait… in what way are the away fans being treated badly?
Surely anyone who has come over to SA for the match will… er… be at the match? Or do you really think that a) Loadshedding is an issue in the south of Ireland, and b) the City of Cape Town somehow has some control over that?
Are you quite mad, Babs Ryan?!?
I did a teeny, tiny bit of research and it seems that it’s actually Eskom that has instituted Stage 5 at 17:00. . And yet it’s CoCT that’s being spiteful?
Honestly, Ronel Cripps. Get real, man.
And then, this:
Always, as Elise Mayer Bouwer tell us, “on an weakrnd”.
Look, I used an AI-powered translation machine thing and it thinks (after quite some deliberation) that Elise is aghast that there is loadshedding on a weekend. Is that unusual? Well, let’s have look at how loadshedding has actually been spread across the days of the week this year, shall we?
Aaand… yes. It does seem that it is always on an weakrnd:
via theoutlier.co.za
…and every single other day as well. Except – actually rather annoyingly – Tuesday 21st March.
So yes, technically, Elise is correct. But I don’t think that her assertion is particularly valuable. Narima is the one who has spotted the bigger pattern here:
And it was a strong start in her comment. That top line is 100% accurate.
But then back onto shooting the messenger in the second half. Muppet.
Look, I get that loadshedding is annoying. It annoys us all. But I can’t help but think that you’re barking up the wrong tree by taking potshots at the City in all of this mess. While they might not be perfect, you’d do well to understand that they’re not responsible for loadshedding. And maybe you need to take a look outside our comfortable little bubble and see what sort of a state the rest of the country is in, before you go wishing for some sort of change in local governance. Because I can assure you, it’s really not very pretty.
An utterly filthy day, as predicted. 42mm of rain in the back garden so far.
I took Mrs 6000 into town to get her passport back, and with it came added visa-ry goodness, so we’re all clear for takeoff to Europe in a few weeks time on #6kTrip23.
On the way back, we were astounded by the amount of water coming off the back of Table Mountain, so I grabbed my camera and popped down to Newlands in the pouring rain to ‘tog it quickly. You can probably imagine that the light wasn’t all that it could be for this enterprise (it was horrendous), and so I was most delighted to make use of the new AI-powered (because what isn’t these days?) denoise tool on Lightroom.
I mean, this is far from great, but it was a lot further from great before I pressed the button on the computer screen.
And while it isn’t going to win any awards, this does at least document the waterfalls, which we’ve seen before, but were much bigger than usual. And the scale is important, but not hugely visible in this pic.
The total height from where I was standing to the top of the rock is 950m. I think this little lot were probably dropping around 500m.
I’m back to my car park this evening, and I’ll probably take the camera along because wet days are the best days there.
The big cold front which was expected to drop in at about 9pm this evening has – according to the word on the street* – already hit Hout Bay.
It’s horrible here
were the exact words that were used, prompting me to immediately type (and then tactfully delete) my reply:
I know. What’s the weather like?
And I do know.
But looking over that way, it does look as if the apocalypse might finally – mercifully – be upon us.
Thus, tonight will be full on Wuthering Heights stuff. Elemental. Cold, windy and wet, with Catherine’s ghost knocking on the window up to 50mm of rain forecast in the next 24 hours. And there’s another 50 on the way early next week.
This isn’t unusual for Cape Town in late autumn, but it is rather unpleasant. The draining effect of the cold, dreary weather is exacerbated by loadshedding, and in turn exacerbates it right back by increasing demand for more heating and light. In addition (of course), solar panels don’t help at all when there’s no sun, so backup batteries are charged from the grid (when it’s on) and that adds to demand and… er… exacerbates loadshedding.
A recipe for misery.
Except of course that every cloud (and I’m looking specifically about those ones rapidly approaching from the South Atlantic) has a silver lining. It wasn’t so long ago that we didn’t have any water at all in this corner of the continent, and we’d do well to remember the stress that little episode caused.
If (and it is always an if) the forecasts are correct, then we could be looking at anything up to 8 or maybe even 10% added to the dams by this time next week.
So always look on the bright side of life (unless you’re in one of those 4½ hour slots of darkness, during which time, there is no bright available).
* a Whatsapp message from the horse-riding instructor.
South Africa is once again demonstrating its neutrality over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This comes just a few days after it was revealed that SA had been following a non-partisan approach by supplying arms and ammunition to Russia.
Now we’ve sent the head of the SANDF (the SA armed forces) to Russia to “visit educational institutions of the ground forces and enterprises of the military-industrial complex” there and “further increase cooperation between ground forces in various fields”.
Thank goodness we’re not taking sides here.
It’s not like we can afford to be doing this. The Rand is tanking already because of loadshedding and the arms shipments row. To add fuel to the fire right now seems both deliberately provocative and deliberately stupid.
South African bilateral trade with Russia amounts to around $1.3 billion. In comparison, bilateral trade with the UK is $10.1 billion, the US is around $17 billion and the EU over $30 billion. To risk all of that for Vlad’s pocket change means that there’s clearly something else happening behind the scenes. Is that something SA owes Russia? Or is it something the Ramaphosa owes Putin?
Because we can talk all day long about how much we abhor the colonial West and and all that they stand for, but that talk is cheap when we are still doing 50x more trade with them each year than we are with Mother Russia. And that’s a lot of money we simply can’t afford to lose.
Maybe the idea is to just run what’s left of the country into the ground before they get voted out at the next election. Or maybe this is actually an election strategy: a vote winner. The anti-imperialists will go for it, of course, but it remains to be seen how the incoming hyper-inflation will attract any normal person to vote for the ANC.
So… what is the plan here? Because I’m equally mystified and concerned.