Cape Town - Brace for a cold, wet and windy few days ahead in the southern high-lying areas of the Namakwa region and the interior of the Western Cape as a well-defined cold front with potent upper air support is expected to make landfall tomorrow.
SA Weather Service forecaster Kanyisa Makubalo said: “An intense cold front is expected to make landfall on Wednesday evening over the south-western parts of the Western Cape.
“Rain and showers will then follow into Thursday spreading to the east. The rain is expected to cease on Thursday evening with cold temperatures persisting into Friday morning but recovering from the afternoon.”
Daytime temperatures are expected to drop with maximum below 10°C. The service indicated that general wet and windy conditions will accompany the cold front, with a low probability of heavy rain (30-40mm) over the mountainous areas of the Cape Metropole and southern parts of the Cape Winelands.
The service also issued a warning for disruptive rain resulting in flooding of roads, low-lying bridges and settlements over the south-western parts of the Western Cape tomorrow, and a warning for damaging waves resulting in difficulty in navigation at sea between Alexander Bay and Plettenberg Bay into Friday.
Stefaan Conradie, a PhD student in climatology from UCT, said: “My reading of current forecasts is that there will be one frontal system passing through on Wednesday night and another on Saturday night. The weather should then clear somewhat but stay cold for Friday and Saturday, before the next system hits on Saturday night.”
On the rainfall figures last month, Makubalo said that according to the weather service, the south-western parts of the Western Cape received above-normal rainfall, near-normal rainfall over the south coast and below-normal rainfall over the northern interior.
Makubalo said their latest seasonal outlook indicated that for most parts of the Western Cape, there was no clear signal of the precipitation outlook for
June, July and August with a low probability of below-normal precipitation. No clear signal essentially means the service’s models are unable to resolve what is expected for that area.
Conradie added that the latest SA Weather Service outlook from last month suggested slightly higher changes of above-normal rainfall for this month to July around Cape Town, and slightly lower chances for the end of the season from July to September.
But as the service indicated, the signal seemed quite weak.