Sun stats

Another lovely day here today and the forecast looks set for more lovely sunny days in the week ahead:

Those temperatures aren’t anything to email home about, but it’s nice enough and, as Mrs 6000 pointed out, it’s hardly summer, is it? Which it absolutely isn’t, no. That would only start on the 1st or the 21st of December, depending upon which system you’re using.

But we shouldn’t be complaining, especially when looking back over at the UK. This image has been doing the rounds over the last 24 hours, indicating the number of hours of sunshine around the UK, the Isle of Man and Ireland over the first 7 (seven) days of November.

Ouch. Eina. My fok. Goodness gracious.

Bearing in mind that London is sitting on an average of about 9 hours 20 minutes of daylight each day, they could have had over 65 hours of sunshine. They got 2.
The Isle of Man – averaging just over 9 hours of daylight last week – got not a single hour.

In seven whole days!

Aberdeen was the big (and rather unlikely) winner. 8¾ hours of daylight each day, and a whole 13 hours of sunshine in seven days. That’s 21% of their daylight as sunshine. Incredible. Their local Burns Unit must be bursting at the seams, just like it is in late January each year.

We made hay (not literally) while the sun shone today, with the Boy Wonder driving himself and his friends down to Agulhas for a long weekend, and LM 6000, having recovered from her singing last night, riding a horse over some big sticks, rather amazingly.

But now it’s time to sit back with a glass of local red, and catch up with the Youtube videos I haven’t had time to watch this week. I’ll be incredibly knowledgeable and a brilliant photographer in about an hour.

Just watch. Literally.

Like a kipper

What a morning. The sun was out. The solar was PUMPING. Really breezy, but it felt… Summery.

But this afternoon, I’ve been done up like a kipper.

It’s riding Friday (not me), and after the incredibly warm, sunny – but really windy weather over our side of the mountain – I asked the riding instructor what the weather was like over on the her side.

It’s lovely out. Slight warm breeze.

Shorts will be comfortable, I reckon.

And so I went with it.

Yeah. But Cape Town doesn’t play.

Four seasons in one day is nothing. Because I genuinely believe that the instructor was telling the truth – we’ve all been so desperate for some sunshine – but in the 20 minutes that it took to get over here…

THINGS HAVE CHANGED.

The wind has picked up, the cloud has rolled in, the sun has gone.

I’m sheltering behind the henhouse (not a euphemism), but it’s still rather chilly. Especially around the leg areas. I mean, I’ll definitely survive, but – for the record – shorts were not comfortable.

I’ve been done up like a kipper.

Winter: “I’m not in this week”

News from Chez Seasons today is that Winter is knackered after all its hard work last Friday, when it chucked 30mm of wet nastiness our way.

Apparently, a leave form was submitted and approved late on Friday evening, and thus, Winter will not be in this week.

Look, while every employee is entitled to annual leave under the
Basic Conditions of Employment Act [No. 75 of 1997], it’s really awkward that Winter has chosen the busiest time to not come in for the next seven days.

And quite why its line manager (presumably God or some other pencil-necked desk jockey?) chose to ok it is a little beyond me.

Still. Not my business to be telling other deities what to do. Not my circus, not my monkeys, not my problem.

Might as well enjoy the sunshine. 

Gloomy

I mean, we were warned. And that Level 6 warning was upped to a Level 9(!) for the Overberg.

But that was the one of the biggest, wettest storms to hit the Western Cape in the (almost) 20 years that I have lived here. Cape Town was bad (really bad), but a bit further south and east was worse.

Bredasdorp is completely cut off, as are Struisbaai, Arniston and Elim. But that doesn’t make a lot of difference, given that Cape Town to Caledon seems to be impossibly impassable as well. We were planning to go out to Agulhas this coming weekend, but now that all clearly depends on how quickly stuff drains down there.

The N2 has disappeared a bit at Bot River.

The road to Struisbaai

The road to Bredasdorp

Even the alternative routes around these problem areas are closed. Stormsvlei, Napier, Stanford – all no through roads at the moment.

Nearer home, as the weather gradually began to improve, we headed down to the V&A Waterfront, where I took this in the somewhat gloomy light.

No Galaxy A33 5G here. This was taken with an actual camera.

Sunshine tomorrow, we are told. We need it.

Day 706 – Rain

It’s been a dry and often cripplingly hot start to 2022 here in Cape Town. So no-one was more relieved than me to have just a few hours of rain this morning. And checking my pluviometer, I was surprised to note that even with the just 4 or 5 hours of light precipitation this morning, we more than doubled the total for the year so far (for our back garden, anyway).

Yep. January 1st to March 1st = 6mm.
This morning alone = 7mm.

It’s all moved on now, but the roads are cleaner, the plants are greener and the place just seems fresher.

If you’re coming to Cape Town soon and are worried that it might be grey and wet all the time, please note this this was the only rain in the forecast for the foreseeable future.