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 SA wakes up to snow
    June 27 2007 at 02:21PM Get IOL on your
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By Murray Williams and Leila Samodien

Dawn broke on Wednesday on a country all dressed in white, after widespread snowfalls overnight.

With temperatures plummeting around the country, reports of snow came in on Wednesday morning from the top of Sani Pass on the KwaZulu-Natal border with Lesotho down to the Boland in the Cape.

It provided the icing on the Hottentots Holland range, as well as the Matroosberg.

'I think all the power lines have been pulled down by the snow'
Cape Town may have escaped the white stuff, but hundreds of people displaced by this week's stormy weather face further downpours predicted for the weekend.

For the first time in a quarter of a century, Johannesburg woke up to a snowscape on Wednesday morning, covering most parts of the city.
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The last time it snowed in the country's biggest city was on September 10, 1981.

At the Phineas-McIntosh Park in Brixton and Zoo Lake in Parkview, families arrived early for snow fun.

Closer to home, Jurg Wagner, of Kambrokind guest house in bitterly cold Sutherland, reported on Wednesday morning: "It's cold, but not that cold - about -4 degrees Celsius. It got as cold as -5,5 degrees Celsius on Tuesday night but the sun is shining and the pass (from Matjiesfontein) is open."

Up the coast in the Eastern Cape, a number of key roads were closed by snowfalls.

Tshepo Machea of the Eastern Cape transport department said roads closed included the N9 between Graaff-Reinet and Middelburg, the R61 between Cradock and Graaff-Reinet and the N6 between James-town and Queenstown, the Nico Malan Pass on the R67 between Seymour and Fort Beaufort and the R58 between Lady Grey and Elliot.

"It's a fairyland, our own Alps," said Lady Grey resident Johan Hattingh.

Further north, Dennis Jocks, general manager at the Sani Pass hotel in the southern Drakensberg, said on Wednesday morning: "We have 25cm of snow. It's still snowing as we speak. I have quite a few staff members who can't get to work from Underberg and Himeville."

"We're told it's going to go down to minus 8 degrees Celsius."

Jonathan Aldous, owner of the Sani Top Chalet at the top of the pass, reported an electricity blackout.

"I think all the power lines have been pulled down by the snow," he said.

On top of the snow, a highly unseasonal and thunderous hailstorm had lashed the area on Tuesday night, he said.

Several hundred kilometres away, Wilna de Bruin of Madeleine's Place B&B in Bethlehem, Free State, said: "We've had loads of people stuck in the snow on Tuesday night."

In Cape Town the weather is set to remain clear until Friday, but the weather office forecast that the showers would return on Saturday.

However, forecaster Keith Moir said this would not be as severe as the wind-driven deluge which battered the Cape earlier in the week and left hundreds of people homeless.

Most of nearly a thousand people hit hardest by the storms spent most of Tuesday drying out their homes and salvaging what was left of furniture and home appliances.

Moir said that at this stage, the rain on Saturday was not expected to persist into Sunday, except along the Garden Route.

"The rain for the upcoming weekend is associated with a cold front system the effect is temporary and not as big a threat as what just happened.

"It won't be remarkable rain conditions," he said.

This week's downpour displaced residents in Khayelitsha, Brown's Farm, Phola Park, Kosovo, Egoli, Thabo Mbeki, Sweet Home and Phoenix Village settlements.

At the mud-covered Lotus settlement in Gugulethu on Tuesday, residents used buckets to scoop water out of their shacks or swept away puddles.

A number of residents said roofs had also been ripped off during gale force winds on Monday.

Some people were so badly affected that they had no option but to move to the nearby Lucas Mbebe community hall.

Resident Sibulele Mbutuma said he had built a water barrier some months ago to prevent water from seeping into his shack when it rained, but this had not stopped flooding ruining his furniture and TV.

"There was too much rain," he said.

"Everyone here is poor, a lot of them don't have jobs and can't afford to get new things."

By noon on Tuesday, resident Nande Tyopo had still not managed to get rid of the water which had flooded into her mother's shack.

Tyopo and her two children, one a year old and the other only a week old, had managed to find refuge at a neighbour's house.

She said she had woken to the sound of water "pouring down on" them. "I thought it was never going to stop," she said.

Johan Minnie, spokesperson for the city's Disaster Risk Management service, said they had provided alternative accommodation, clothes and blankets to those affected by the storm.

"We've got the department of roads and stormwater working on alleviating the flooding in these areas so people can hopefully return to where they were," Minnies said.

"If it is found that there is absolutely no way that they can return, then human settlement services will have to look into resettlement in different areas."



    • This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on June 27, 2007
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