The South African Weather Service (Saws) has warned of icy temperatures that could last until the end of August, with wet conditions expected over the western part of the country for most of the remaining winter season.
The warning comes as the farm Buffelsfontein near Molteno in the Eastern Cape, officially notorious as the coldest place in the country where a record low of -20 was recorded on 23 August 2013, plunged to severe lows last weekend.
And although the -17.5 measured there on Sunday evening was still a few degrees warmer than 2013’s plummeting mercury, it was still extreme enough to be a harbinger of freezing temperatures, said chief researcher Andries Kruger of climate data at Saws.
Adding more detail to the weather picture of the next weeks, Kruger said heavy snow was expected for the higher altitude areas of the Western Cape and southern mountainous regions of the Northern Cape.
Heavy rain of between 50mm and 80mm is also predicted for the western regions of the Overberg and the Western Cape’s winelands.
People in the various Cape provinces have also been warned of wind gusting at around 50-70 kilometres an hour for the next few days.
As for the rest of South Africa, climatologist Johan van der Berg at Santam Agriculture said the cold front systems coming in from the south west could help to bring about early summer rain to the east and north of the Drakensberg watershed.
Should the incoming weather patterns unfold as predicted, drought conditions that have plagued western South Africa could be substantially alleviated, if not broken, by the time spring arrives.
