Cape Town doesn’t look its best today.
It looks like a scene from a disaster movie, with floods, broken trees, branches and damaged buildings everywhere.
We did get completely battered by yesterday’s storm.
But… give it a couple of weeks (ok, or maybe a month), and all that will be tidied up and forgotten about, and Cape Town will still be the most desirable city on the continent.
Which has its drawbacks:
But still, you’d rather be here than anywhere else.
Monumental weather today.
Over 100mm of rain, winds gusting to 120kph, just absolute carnage.
Biggest storm this century for the Mother City, allegedly.
I’m finding it hard to disagree.
Floods everywhere, trees down – one killing a motorist just around the corner from us – branches all over the place. It’s going to take a while to clear up.
School went ahead for us, but plenty didn’t. And everyone has the day off tomorrow…
…which seems weird, given that today was horrific and dangerous, and tomorrow is just going to be wholly unpleasant. But I doubt that many students will be complaining.
There was a 1½ hour period this morning where nothing could land at Cape Town airport:
Imagine leaving Johannesburg, and then – 4 hours later – ending up in… Johannesburg.
Heartbreakingly awful. Thoughts and prayers.
Locally, there is plenty of damage, with trees down all over the neighbourhood. With the polyphagous shot hole borer beetle epidemic having weakened many of the oak trees around the area, the winds were just too much for a lot of them, and the results are pretty devastating.
If the forecast is correct (and it’s been unerringly accurate today), then we’re just in for about 20mm of rain tomorrow, which is still a lot, unless you’ve had 110mm the previous day, in which case you feel like grabbing your swimsuit and then heading to the beach.
Hopefully, with less wind and less rain, there will be an opportunity to start the clear up: not least for me in our garden. Although, maybe I actually quite like our new rim-flow pool.
Today hasn’t been that bad.
But tomorrow looks rather ominous.
The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has issued an Orange Level 8 weather warning for disruptive rainfall in the Western Cape.
Level 8 indicates “Severe” impact, and yes, Mother Nature is throwing everything at us all at once: big waves, big winds, and a lot of rain.
The Garden Route was hit by an Orange Level 8 last week, and… well…
It didn’t end well.
While many schools in the Winelands are closed tomorrow, ours in Cape Town go ahead unless we hear differently overnight.
We’re as ready as we can be.
I have an umbrella.
Let’s see what happens.
It’s Freedom Day today, giving a nod to 32 South African years since the first democratic elections back in 1994. There are many, many things that you can argue could have been done differently in the intervening period, but so as to be able to celebrate the good bits therein, we get the day off.
So how did we spend it?
Well, after gym (which wouldn’t have been quite so high on my agenda had I known what was coming), there was a walk on the mountain, enjoying the waterfalls:
…and overlooking the leafy green suburbs of Newlands and Fernwood.
Before dropping down into Kirstenbosch Gardens (mid right of the photo above) where we found a Malachite Sunbird (Nectarinia famosa):
And then an afternoon at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth, where we saw a Betway sponsored horse win a race underwritten by LuckyFish Betting.
We’re all good. It’s not a problem. (It really is a problem.)
That said, if you have things under control and you set your limits and stick to them, you can still have fun and come out richer than when you went in. Which I did, and which was nice.
A real pot of gold at the end of that rainbow then, mostly likely guarded by a leper or a unicorn*.
Pretty good way to spend a pretty good South African day.
.
* you had to be there.
5 (and a bit) weeks on from this day:
When numerous local records were broken for heat all over the Western Cape. And we find ourselves in Cape Town probably with temperatures pretty much as low as they’re going to get during the day this year.
100mm rain over the last three days – that was only up to 8am this morning, which is when the local figures are collated – and there has been PLENTY more today. (I can still hear it battering down now.)
The wind at Simonstown apparently gusted up to 104kph this afternoon: just short of hurricane strength. It’s been a bit of a wild day, and I’m almost glad that I chose gym over a run.
I know that the seasons change, and that the weather changes with them, but you generally do expect the highs and lows to be six months apart, not six weeks.
Thankfully, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (25oC) are looking actually rather nice, which is great for football, washing, and biology field trips: all of which will be happening on those days.
And we really shouldn’t complain. We need the rain.
I’ll pop a quick post up tomorrow with some updated dam level and rainfall info, for anyone interested. And then a post about invasive plants or something slightly less mundane than the weather.
T&Cs apply.