Some weird symbols on my weather app this week.
What are the five blue dots on the cloud for Wednesday?
I’m sure I have seen them before – maybe like six months ago – but they just aren’t familiar to me.
Answers on a postcard, please.
Could it be another event – I’m playing football that evening – ruined by precipitation?
It hasn’t rained much in Cape Town over the last few weeks. Maybe even the last few months.
And there is a bit of “Day Zero” talk entering the chat, although to be fair, we’re a long way from that sort of scenario at the moment (but you never say never).
In fact, looking back, I can only really remember a few hours of rain over the last few months. Two of those hours were last Tuesday night, when we tried to watch the cricket. It didn’t rain all day – just for the few hours when we actually needed it to be dry, so that they could play cricket. And once the cricket (such as it was) was over (no pun intended), it stopped raining and was all hot and dry again.
And the other few hours are… well… now. Again, it’s been a scorcher of a day, but then this evening, it began to rain. Why? Well, that would be because our daughter went to an outdoor concert.
Not this morning (dry), not this afternoon (hot and dry), just this evening. And, much like the evening of the cricket, it looks like the rain will stop pretty much as the concert ends.
There will be no rain tomorrow evening, when there also won’t be a concert.
Perfect.
I once had an idea involving an iceberg, which would have solved Cape Town’s water issues forever.
I did a fair amount of maths and stuff for that, but actually, why bother with dragging a chunk of Antarctica all the way to South Africa and then filling the Franschhoek Valley with ice when I can clearly just make it rain by spending money on weather-sensitive evening activities?
If you need some rain, I’ll just buy expensive tickets for a theatre thing or some tennis (ok, not tennis), and we can all enjoy the precipitation and petrichor as the evening is ruined, the money wasted, but the dams filled up.
IN CASE YOU ARE WONDERING – and I don’t blame you for wanting to ask – no, I can’t see any more events in our diary which will be ruined by rainfall, just yet. So you’re free to go about your business safe in the knowledge that it’s not going to rain on your parade.
Only mine.
But of course, I’ll keep you informed.
It has been raining a lot. And it is still raining. And there’s more rain in the forecast.
But just how much has it been raining?
This much:
367.8mm in the last few days just down the road from us about an hour ago. And I’m only saying “about an hour ago” because it’s almost certainly more than that now.
The rain has only really been falling for the last 4 days, so we’re looking at almost 100mm a day. And our local ground really isn’t set up for that. Hence all the flooding.
We might have a couple of dry days (T&Cs apply) before the next wave(s) of rain head in.
Right now, I’m going to watch the mud-wrestling rugby from the stadium in town.
It’s wintery today. The frogs are going mad out there.
The rain arrived early this morning, surprising absolutely no-one who had been keeping an eye on the developing forecast over the weekend.
I was shocked.
Shocked because I thought everything was arriving tomorrow and I was going to do today’s post about it. And indeed, there are plenty of warnings out for “disruptive rain”:
…but just not for today.
But the rain tomorrow is coming and it does look suitably biblical. Probably at least one inch or 25mm, which the dams (59.1%) and the gardens certainly need, but which is going to make for a(nother) rather unpleasant day.
And so it turns out that all the prep I had in mind to get ready for the rain tomorrow now has to be done in the rain today. Bugger.
And so much for that blog post forewarning you all of the nastiness.
Not much point in doing that now, is there?
I ducked out of football tonight after a weekend with an iffy viral thing. Nothing too bad – I just slept a lot. And while I’m feeling much better now, I tried a run this morning, and there’s not an awful lot of energy in the tank. Almost 30 seconds per km slower than usual, and the hills left me broken. So better to prudently withdraw, rather than try to push things too hard and give myself even more from which to recover.
I did get the opportunity to try out my new running jacket, though: this time in proper rain. Because it actually rained quite hard today. And it handled it perfectly. That Water Column Rating of 10 000 mm (I don’t know what this means) really worked well, and the Breathability: well, I know it says 10000 g/m²/24h (again, no idea how this works), but it genuinely felt so much more.
In other news, things are starting to end for the year. Exams are done (finally), piano lessons finished yesterday, art school today. The last singing lesson is on Thursday, and there are only 6 more days of school: mainly for exam paper handbacks, prizegivings, and general end of year celebrations.
We’re away for a few days at the end of next week: a place somewhere in the Swartland with a pool and a hottub and very little else, and I can’t wait. I’ll be working doubly hard in the run up to that little trip so that I can get some blog posts pre-written and ready to go, leaving my time free for relaxing and braai’ing. Some exercise wouldn’t go amiss, perhaps a spot of photography, and there might just be some olives and a wine farm or two on the cards as well, given the region’s outstanding reputation for Shiraz.
It would be rude not to.
But more on that nearer the time.
This evening: United at home to Oxford – one of my old stomping grounds. It’s going to be another late one, but I hope it’s another good one too.