Tag: weather warning

Quite a bit of rain

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With Cape Town allegedly desperate for rain (except we’re only comparing the dam levels this year with those from last year which followed the wettest winter on record), Cape Town is going to get some rain.

Quite a bit of rain.

Time to light the fire, grab some red wine, slow cook a beef casserole and hide under a duvet.

Not all at the same time, obviously. Incredibly foolish idea. Mess everywhere.

But it is probably best to just check that your gutters are all clear in tomorrow’s balmy 19oC before Friday hits.

This isn’t the first big storm of the season: it’s not even a proper cold front. But actually, the lack of wind (8kph SW) does mean that once the rain arrives, it’s not going to go away very quickly, and thus will keep falling on the same bit of South Africa (Cape Town) all day.

Edit: It is. Forecast updated. Wet and windy.

Don’t say that you weren’t warned.

Yellow warning

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There’s a yellow warning out for potential severe thunderstorms and heavy rain over Cape Town and parts of the Western Cape tonight, and I couldn’t be happier. Everything is dry and brown and so very DUSTY.

Not only do we need some rain to alleviate the drought that we’ve been suffering, we need some rain just to give the place a nice clean.

It’s not a huge warning for Cape Town, but they have gone with “High Likelihood”, which is great news. No-one wants floods and stuff; just enough to wash away all the grime. But it must happen, please.

However, we’re looking at a different picture down in Cape Agulhas, where they’re playing with “High Likelihood” and “Significant Impact”. And no-one has forgotten the horrific floods of September 2023 (that one when Juan was a bit of a twat). They could do with the rain, but no repeat of those scenes.

I’ve checked our gutters are clear (and so should you), and I’ll be lobbing some fertiliser on the garden before bed tonight: might as well make the most of the opportunity.

But right now, with the sun still beaming in the cloudless sky, I’m going to watch some footy before the weekend is – once again, all too quickly – over.

Warning

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I’ve spent my day watching Dodgeball. It’s been fun.

Tomorrow looks like less fun, not because of the Dodgeball, but because of the weather:

Level 6 is pretty hectic. To put it in perspective, Level 0 is “Turned out nice again, Gromit”, and Level 10 is the Apocalypse.

So things might be a bit rough over the next 48 hours.

I shall shelter next to a Dodgeball court in town.

Next cold front coming

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More “Damaging winds” and “Disruptive rain” are expect today and this evening. The wind is already here, and while it hasn’t done any damage yet (that I know about, at least), you can see how it might, because it is quite strong and gusty. And those are two of the main attributes of wind that can cause damage. On the plus side, we did get a beautiful pre-frontal sunrise this morning, which my phone did its best to capture:

But didn’t really do it justice.

This cold front is not going to be as big as the last one, which – for the record – deposited a total of 154mm of rain into our back garden. That’s a lot, given that our annual rainfall here is 1150mm.
It also raised the Cape Town dam levels by a very welcome 5%. I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations and that means that over the past few days, the net inflow into the dams comes in at 44,911,050,000 litres or 45 billion litres, give or take.

Your occasional reminder that a small percentage of a very big number is still a very big number.

According to my best sources, the rain will begin at about 8pm, peak around dawn tomorrow (poor Dawn), and continue on and off for most of Saturday, ruining any local rugby matches that you couldn’t buy tickets for anyway. Sunday, on the other hand, looks like it will be full of equal amounts of sunshine and freezing temperatures.

Have a lovely weekend.