Cape Town, surrounding mountains brace for ‘heavy’ rain, possible snowfall

tropical cyclone belna cape town rain cold front, utrecht tornado

Looks like Cape Town’s first heavy rain of the winter months has arrived.

On Saturday, the South African Weather Service on Twitter issued a number of warnings for localised flooding across the Western Cape. This is thanks to a cold front which is currently brushing through the city, with the weather abating on Monday afternoon.

“A cold front will be pushing in over the Western Cape in the next few hours with rain across the western parts of the Western Cape overnight to tomorrow late morning clearing from the west,” it tweeted in another post on Sunday evening.

“15-25mm widely expected and up to 40-50mm in western mountains.”

Cape Town is in desperate need of the rain too. According to the City of Cape Town’s latest dam level report, the combined storage of all six of its large supply dams topped 45.6%. That’s more than last year’s levels of 21.3%, but definitely worrying should we see low rainfall this winter.

UCT’s CSAG has noted it’s been an average year for rain for many important areas across the Cape, including our largest dam, the Theewaterskloof, and the second largest, the Voëlvlei Dam. This week’s cold front can largely change this though.

And there’s more. According to local snow tracking service Snow Report, we could possibly see some flakes fall on the peaks of the Western Cape’s tallest mountains, including the Matroosberg.

“We’re seeing the possibility of a few centimetres of snow on the high peaks of the Hex River Mountains around Worcester, De Doorns and Ceres,” it added on its website.

Feature image: Andy Walker/Memeburn

Andy Walker, former editor
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