Tag: weather forecast

Day 171 – Tucked in

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I played some football this morning and then the plan was to do a hike on the Mountain, but something told us that it probably wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe it was the weather forecast promising “heavy showers”. [spoiler: it was the weather forecast promising “heavy showers”.]

Anyway, my leg hurts, so I’m quite happy to stay in this afternoon.

Long story short, it was a good decision and I’m currently enjoying a nice glass of port in front of a roaring fire while the rain and wind outside do their best to remind us that Spring isn’t quite here yet.

There is football on the TV (via the internet) and the only downside is the reappearance of Tim Sherwood on the pundits panel for the upcoming season.

It’s manageable with the mute button.

Wind

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It’s Sunday, and I may still be around. I’m not 100% sure, because I’m writing this on Saturday and there’s a rather large storm headed towards Agulhas this evening. We’re talking 90kph winds and plenty (or more) of rain.

It’s already breezy, but I like this sort of weather, and I’m not the only one:

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We watched this guy having fun in the surf near the Mees Suidelike Punt. I suspect that tomorrow’s (er… that’s now today’s) forecast wind may be a bit much for kiteboarding. It may actually be a bit much for anything other than red wine and a roaring fire, but fortunately, we have those bases well covered.

Rain

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There was a hint a few years back about a new law in SA which prevented anyone – well, anyone without appropriate qualification, anyway – from publicly commenting on upcoming bad weather. This was obviously a hugely important step in a country where the discussion of upcoming poor meteorological conditions has topped the lists for both most serious and most prevalent crimes for the past decade. Time to end this heinous behaviour.
Here’s Ivo’s view on it.

To be honest, I’ve no clue if that law was ever passed, and thus I’m not willing to stick my neck out and suggest that there may be excessive precipitation headed towards Cape Town on any particular day in the near future. Like, Wednesday, for instance. Simply, I can’t say if that’s going to happen.

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It would surely be even more foolhardy of me to do some rudimentary calculations by adding up some apparently random numbers…

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…perhaps including 6.4, 10.7, 13.3, 12.7, 4.6, 6.6, 7.1 and 5.6, and then gasp in amazement and concern that the total of those digits is 67. And were that the number of millimetres of rain to fall in any given 24 hour period, that would be quite a bad thing for wherever it fell on. Especially if some of that place was already at high risk for landslides following large veld fires earlier in the year.

Not that I’m saying that’s what’s going to happen, of course. In Cape Town. Throughout Wednesday.

Because I’d be risking arrest if I told you that.

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

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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.