Breeze

Could this be the last “proper” cold front to come through this winter?
It’s definitely on its way, with the skies looking threatening, and the wind on the rise.

My feeling is no. There’s still plenty of time for a couple more Cape storms to round off a very wet and cold wintertime here.

So, some sort of hat is probably in order.

That said, after this one and its hangers on, there does appear to be a bit of a window of distinctly springlike weather in the medium-term forecast.

Let’s not count our chickens.

Actually, chicken counting might be a good idea before the worst of the weather comes in tonight. There’s a real danger that your chickens might get blown away by a wind which is expected to gust well into the 90s. That’s kph, not the best decade for music.

50 knots. 58 Swedish miles per hour. Hectic, bru. Those numbers fall squarely into the Force 10 Storm on the Beaufort Scale, which I’m told is the goto scale for all things wind-related. So yes, count your chickens and make sure you tape down your beagle’s ears firmly to prevent excessive flappery.

So yeah, another few days of cold, wet misery to get through before we can even think about getting rid of these “hospital tans” and enjoying the sunshine.

Good luck.

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. 

Is this winter (at last)?

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but we’re well into May, and we’ve only really had one brief spell of rain so far this year. And that wasn’t even a cold front: it was a cut-off low that wasn’t as bad as anyone really expected it to be. But however the rain fell, it was the only rain we’ve had in over 5 months.

I’m not sure if anyone is getting a bit anxious over this situation, given Cape Town’s recent droughty history. Maybe we’ve all been concentrating too much on the twin disasters of loadshedding and the upcoming election to notice how dry it’s been, but with the dam levels at just 62%, we really could do with a bit of precipitation now, please.

Fortunately, today looks like it might actually deliver. A proper cold front, with a gusty Northwester and anything up to 12mm of rain heading in sometime this afternoon before things thankfully resolve ahead of the footy match I’m playing on Wednesday evening. And then it looks like Friday might chuck a bit more at us, if we’re lucky.

Look, I know that we all wish that summer could go on forever. The sunshine is great for generating electricity, making the decision to braai a lot easier, and encouraging us to get out and about. Not least to the pub. But that’s clearly not practical in even the medium term. You have to take the rough with the smooth when breaking your eggs to make an omelette.

So get your firewood ready, wrap up warmly, and let’s face the 3 months of cold, wet weather so that we can actually enjoy the brighter, warmer stuff when it comes around again. And we can rejoice in not having to use standpipes to get our drinking water.

Filthy out

Warning: Ramblings ahead.

A properly filthy day out, but because the microwave exploded yesterday afternoon, I had to go and take it to the microwave (see if we can) repair (it) shop, to see if they could repair it.

As a scientist, if ever we wanted to know what something did in a system, we would remove it from that system, and see what happened. That’s how we worked out that humans need oxygen to survive.

Probably, anyway.

The microwave, removed from the household system with what I think might be a transformer issue, is clearly very important in warming drinks, hot sacks and Saturday evening’s takeaway curry. In fact, given how much we’ve missed it already, I’d argue that it is almost as essential as the oxygen in the house. “Almost” because no-one has actually died yet, but given the rising levels of frustration each time someone tries to use the defunct microwave, there’s every chance that someone might.

Thus, when the guys at the repair place get in touch tomorrow, if the prognosis is not good, I will be buying another microwave very shortly after I take the call. I mean, RIP to the microwave and all that, but in the cold light of day, it’s a wholly replaceable kitchen appliance, not a family member – whatever it might think.

There’s no time for emotion here.

I’m heading out to my car park this evening, but such are the miserable conditions out, I might even be pushed into lighting the fire for the first time this year. I have to think of those I leave behind, see?
It’s 14oC out, and it’s been raining fairly consistently all day. 30mm so far, but I’m quite sure that there’s more on the way. It feels dark and grey and wintery, so I think that a nice fire would cheer up the living room a little.

It would also dry the washing, so there’s a practical side to things as well.

I shall do it.

One thing which has been noticeable this afternoon is the reappearance of our Cape Rain Frogs. This is the first big rain of the season, and they are already chirping away with both glee and delight, but where have they been for the 6 months of bakingly dry summer? In their burrows underground, that’s where. Because although they are frogs, they prefer stick to damp ground, because they’re a bit rubbish at anything to do with water: they can’t swim and they can drown if they get out of their depth.

Pathetic.

Right, let me sort some dinner (stove top) and light that fire. We might as well dip our toes into autumn and winter and embrace the atmosphere. Before heading to an unheated car park for 2½ hours.

Postponed and cancelled

More things postponed and cancelled thanks to this seemingly never-ending winter.

Our Robben Island trip is off. 5.6m swells on Friday afternoon mean that there will be no boats going to or from the Island that day or over the weekend.

We’ll try again in October.

Both family (not me and not me) riding lessons were cancelled this weekend because of the stormy conditions.

Sticking with the equine theme, tomorrow’s race meeting at Durbanville – which we had plans to attend – has been called off. 32mm of rain in 48 hours is their reasoning, but that doesn’t seem like a lot really. We had more than double that in the back garden, and I haven’t cancelled any horse racing.

There are still some things which have gone ahead:

Dodgeball training. It’s indoors, see? That’s why I’m in my car park right now.

Mrs 6000’s Flower Walk in the West Coast National Park:

A great success, it seems, despite the flowers “not being as good as last year”. Why would you tell this year’s attendees that, though?

Little Miss 6000’s tour along the Garden Route:

If anything, the stunning snow on the mountains, captured here by their teacher, surely enhanced the trip out East.

Anyway, it looks like I’m at home for the rest of the week now, so the bar should be finished by the weekend. Silver linings and all that.