Rain and storm for Cpt

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Gordon_R said:
There was a surprise rain shower out of nowhere at 2.30am in Kenilworth, Cape Town (Thurs 2nd). I jumped out of bed to check that it really was rain and not wind. Actually the NW wind was blowing too!

A flash was observed from the NW direction, and thunderstorms are moving down from the west coast. Its magic lying back watching the walls illuminated by lightning, and listening to distant rumbles of thunder. (Waxing poetic for a bit...)

Rain was predicted by some models but not others, so its all very weird by CT standards!?
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We had the same at 3h00 this morning in Stellenbosch.
 
Icemanbrfc said:
Christmas has come early Gordon
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Actually the thundershowers started on Halloween (Tues 31st), but that's my birthday, and for a weather-freak storms do seem like Xmas!

Back on topic: The amount of rain has been minuscule, and is unlikely to have any significant effect on the dam levels. Mostly just entertainment value at the start of a long and dry summer...
 
Gordon_R said:
Actually the thundershowers started on Halloween (Tues 31st), but that's my birthday, and for a weather-freak storms do seem like Xmas!

Back on topic: The amount of rain has been minuscule, and is unlikely to have any significant effect on the dam levels. Mostly just entertainment value at the start of a long and dry summer...
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anything is better than nothing to shift day zero a few days back, for example I would prefer light rain in the coming 3 months than opposed to hot dry days
 
We are just not getting continuous rain fall.. It's a half a day or a day at most, then nothing
 
A friend stays in Elgin and apparently it chucked it down last night. Good for the Steenbras dam
 
Agent_Smith said:
A friend stays in Elgin and apparently it chucked it down last night. Good for the Steenbras dam
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The kind of showery rain we are getting today is rather patchy (in location and duration). If it did rain heavily, that doesn't show up in any of the official measuring stations up to 8am on Thurs 2nd: http://www.weathersa.co.za/media/data/climate/nr_daily_rai.pdf

Springbok (NC) 18mm, Tsitsikamma (EC) 13mm, Ceres, 12mm, Ladismith 10mm, Langebaan 7mm, Robertson 7mm, CT airport 6mm, Grabouw 5mm, etc
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Surprise flash of lightning and loud rumble of thunder overhead (Kenilworth, Cape Town) at 00.15am! A few drops of rain, barely reaching the surface.

There is a weak upper trough passing over the SW-Cape, and there were plenty of nice clouds earlier, but I was not expecting any drama...

Edit: Very close strike and loud bang rattled windows and set off car alarms. Not common in Cape Town!
 
Gordon_R said:
Surprise flash of lightning and loud rumble of thunder overhead (Kenilworth, Cape Town) at 00.15am! A few drops of rain, barely reaching the surface.

There is a weak upper trough passing over the SW-Cape, and there were plenty of nice clouds earlier, but I was not expecting any drama...

Edit: Very close strike and loud bang rattled windows and set off car alarms. Not common in Cape Town!
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I heard the same thing and I'm in the city
 
Agent_Smith said:
A friend stays in Elgin and apparently it chucked it down last night. Good for the Steenbras dam
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Steenbras dam is doing relatively alright. Theewaterskloof dam is a mess. Looks like a desert in certain areas of it.
 
I really do pray and hope that the blessings of rain will fall all over Cape Town and especially in the catchment areas to alleviate the drought that you guys are experiencing in that part of the country
 
According to the weather forecast currently the areas of Riviersonderend, Carolineville, Greyton and Heuwelkroon should be getting at least 6mm of rain:) I know you guys need so much more than that ?
 
Some chap on Cape Talk last night was advocating building a ten billion rand water pipeline from the Orange River down to the Cape...

I almost called in to explain that in the forty odd years that I have been residing down at the Orange Ricer mouth, last year was the lowest level ever and according to a source in Nature conservation, the lower reaches of the Orange will run empty by the tirn of the decade....

One of the tributaries to the the lower Orange River is from the Namibian Fish river. The Italians are busy building a massive dam further up this river that will be the largest in Namibia and one of the largest in Southern Africa.... The German colonialists had the idea for a dam here over 100 years ago.... Nekertal Dam , west of Keetmanshoop....

Not sure were all the water will come from..
 
Mortymoose said:
Some chap on Cape Talk last night was advocating building a ten billion rand water pipeline from the Orange River down to the Cape...

I almost called in to explain that in the forty odd years that I have been residing down at the Orange Ricer mouth, last year was the lowest level ever and according to a source in Nature conservation, the lower reaches of the Orange will run empty by the tirn of the decade....

One of the tributaries to the the lower Orange River is from the Namibian Fish river. The Italians are busy building a massive dam further up this river that will be the largest in Namibia and one of the largest in Southern Africa.... The German colonialists had the idea for a dam here over 100 years ago.... Nekertal Dam , west of Keetmanshoop....

Not sure were all the water will come from..
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One of the worst flash floods I ever experienced was in the flood plain of that river ..... So when it rains in them mountains North and East Grunau, it can be devastating.
 
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Geoff.D said:
One of the worst flash floods I ever experienced was in the flood plain of that river ..... So when it rains in them mountains North and East Grunau, it can be devastating.
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Added to that, the ground is usually so dry it cannot absorb the sudden water and stays on the surface.....
 
Geoff.D said:
One of the worst flash floods I ever experienced was in the flood plain of that river ..... So when it rains in them mountains North and East Grunau, it can be devastating.
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I've experienced that myself back in January 2016.

The wife and I were on our way home from our honeymoon (Namibian roadtrip!), and we were driving from Windhoek to Cape Town in two days, with an overnight rest stop at the Felix Unite base camp just downstream of Noordoewer. I don't remember any rain along the route itself, but after our lunch stop in Keetmanshoop, we drove through plenty of evidence: every river bed (that had been dry on the drive up) was a raging torrent.

Around 40 km north of Noordoewer (somewhere around the D316 to Ais Ais), said raging torrent was flowing over the B1 for a good 50 metres or so. Thankfully, the water was subsiding by then (the rain had likely occurred a while earlier), so we waited a while until it was safe to cross. Keep in mind that we were in a Nissan Micra (the wife's car; mine had had clutch failure on the N1 at Century City in rush hour mere days before our wedding, so I quickly had to devise Plan B), so crossing was not an option (although the cross-border trucks had no such problem) and there was no suitable alternative route (apart from turning back to Grunau and taking the B3/N10 to Upington, which we immediately decided was not an option). The car had actually handled surprisingly well approximately 900 km of Namibian dirt roads (everyone should put driving the C27 on their bucket lists, but that's a topic for another thread), but they had been dry; I wasn't going to throw it into a flood.

The Felix Unite camp, when we finally got there, was a total mess. Half of the roads within the camp had been washed away and had seemingly ended up in their swimming pool). The next morning, the staff was preparing the cleanup operation as we were departing (the camp manager estimated a few months).

We later heard that, shortly after we departed Keetmanshoop, the town itself was hit by a flash flood, with lives lost in the informal settlement.

Definitely a lesson to be learned here: the power and sudden volume of water in arid regions is not to be taken lightly.
 
Mmh! Slightly off the topic, But seeing as we are touching on Flooding in Namibia, indeed a rare event.... Back in the day, The English HO and I were camping at Ai-Ais.... The Fish River came down in flood and all us Namibians were in our element. The Manager at the time was a friend of mine Sakkie Rothmann and he stood on the stone wall and gave an impromptu lecture on flooding in the NAMIB, all about the rock types not absorbing the water, really interesting, we lapped up every word, appreciating the special moment... The foreigners did not appreciate the sudden aquatic onslaught and all went into bitch mode, demanding their money back and wanting to leave...

Ai-AIs-Floods.jpg
 
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