Tag: table mountain

Is There Going To Be Snow On Table Mountain This Week?

Posted on

UPDATE: Wednesday afternoon – here’s the latest news

OMG! OMG! OMG! Yes! OMG!
Well, that’s what Facebook says anyway.

The thing is, everyone is going bonkers over a single forecast from mountain-forecast.com, which appears to be the ANN7 of weather forecasting websites:

tmnt

As you can see, they’re suggesting a total of 9 cm of snow (those red numbers) on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and they say:

Our advanced weather models allow us to provide distinct weather forecasts for several elevations of Table Mountain.

Te one above is distinctly their best guess for 1087m elevation – which is about as high as Table Mountain is. So there you go.

However, other more reputable sites, such as windguru.cz and weathersa.co.za are merely predicting much coldness and rain for the Mother City.

But before you get all depressed at the prospect of having no snow on Table Mountain again, just like there wasn’t last summer as well, there may actually be a glimmer of hope at the end of the Cableway.

And that’s because even windguru is suggesting that there will be light precipitation over Cape Town on Thursday evening AND they’re saying that it’ll be 0°C at about 1000m elevation as well:

wg

While it is a myth that it actually needs to be 0°C for snow to fall (actually, precipitation generally falls as snow below 2°C) this is certainly cold enough for snow on the summit of Table Mountain to be a possibility this week.

The last snowfall on the mountain was in August 2011.

Break out the skis and the snowshoes. And someone please warn Instagram to get some extra servers on the go.
This could be serious.

Morning Mountain

Posted on

I pulled over, whipped my phone out, pointed it and shot this morning just opposite where I took my tumble. Because reaching the back of the traffic queue on Rhodes Drive was nowhere near as important as getting a Gratuitous Thursday Morning Mountain Shot.

Yes, people elsewhere in the world, this is my view on the way into work.

Can anyone out there compete?

My Sunday

Posted on

A day dominated by buying a car (a really awesome car that cost way too much money) and saying goodbye to my runabout of the last 8 years. I shall miss him. That said, the new car is bigger, better and has (amongst other features) a camera on the back to assist with reversing. The image from the camera pops up on the rear view mirror which is a little bit unnecessary, but is also ridiculously cool and the kids want to see it all the time. Sadly, they don’t realise that I have to put the car into reverse for it to activate and that this is not an option at 100kph (forwards) on the M3.

A day also dominated by football. I only managed to catch one match (well, so far anyway, he said, eagerly eyeing the La Liga fixtures of the evening ahead), but what a match: Man City 3-2 Southampton. Oh, how I missed the beautiful game over the winter. And oh, how my wife’s TV watching is going to be sharply curtailed during the upcoming months.

Finally, as promised yesterday, getting the photos from our trip up Table Mountain up onto Flickr.

Yes, lots of touristy photos, but I seem to have some unwritten duty to promote Cape Town. Not that it needs my help on days like yesterday. It was absolutely stunning up on top of the big flat rock…

Gone up

Posted on

image

A landmark day – literally – for our kids today, as we took them up Table Mountain for the first time.

It’s such a part of Cape Town life that I’m amazed and a little embarrassed that we haven’t done it before.

Still, it’s done now and I’d share more photos if I wasn’t going to play Hide The Black Label in Constantia this evening. More tomorrow, including some (or more) mentions of Sheffield United’s winning start to the season.