Today is lovely. Blue skies, slight breeze, swallows swooping up above.
But remember how I predicted the end of winter about 5 weeks ago? In retrospect, that was funny because it’s been crap weather ever since. And I then said something of the lines of:
Actually, we want spring to come at the normal time, which is probably about a month from now. Because while the dams might be nice and full (99.6% this week, down from 100.4% last week, to be exact), we need them to be like that in the middle of September too, when spring should start.
Well, we’re there now, the dams are still full, and while there are a few signs that Spring is on the way, Winter is going to have one (last?) blast at us this weekend, but weirdly, in a Summery kind of way.
There’s a cut-off low expected from tomorrow through until Monday. More often seen in warmer months (which this is not), cut-off lows are characterised in the Western Cape by gale force South Easterly winds and heaps (and heaps) of rain. Experts will tell you that water is not known for its heaping properties, so if the rain is making heaps, you know that there’s a lot of it.
People in the know have been bouncing around numbers like 100mm and 90kph for the precipitation and the gusting winds. Those are fairly significant numbers at any time, but especially when our local ground is already saturated from a seemingly endless winter and our local trees have been battered very recently.
Will that be it then, though? Winter weather-wise? Well, while* there’s nothing nasty in the immediate aftermath of this long weekend’s fun and games:
You’d be hard-pushed to suggest that an average high of 20 would constitute a definite return of Spring to Cape Town.
But at least there’s the sight of a yellow blob each day from Tuesday onwards.
Maybe… just maybe… warmer times are ahead.
* argh! accidental alliteration. awkward.
