Snow fell over the weekend on the higher mountain ranges of the Western Cape with the passing of a fairly fast cold front. Conditions dropped to the lower to mid-teens for a couple of days before recovering quickly. Conditions for Cape Town over the next few days include a rising in temperatures until the latter parts of the week, temperatures will hover around 25'C.

Conditions throughout the rest of the country remain fairly typical for winter. There has been a lack of strong cold fronts this season for much of the country, the cold fronts that have passed through have been of fairly high pressure, and even the snow incidents, the cold fronts were not accompanied with the typical sharp troughs which create the pressure differences that cause gale force winds, though with this said there is still a month or so left of winter.

In the tropical Atlantic it has also been a fairly slow start to the season, majority of tropical storms have fallen apart really quickly and have not shown any signs of danger to the United States. This has been due to dry air and shear, SST temperatures continue to remain high though. Cape Verdes season begins late August usually, where long tracking tropical storms some times tend to pose a risk to approach the Caribbean and later the Gulf of Mexico and the American coast. But thus far there has not really been anything to report on that's exciting.

First, here's a photograph I took last night on July 8th as altocumulus clouds approached Cape Town ahead of the upcoming cold front. The image is 6 stitched 18mm photographs resulting in a rather large width.

The main weather interest at the moment for South Africa should be the upcoming cold front, like most of the storms this year it is supported by a fairly weak high pressure system and isn't deep enough to create winds that we usually experience in winter. But as before, we may well see freezing levels drop to around 1200m around the Cape Town region. This means that snow is definitely likely on much of the Western Cape mountains. A few sprinkles are even possible on table mountain, though not anticipated. A few weeks ago Cape Town was victim to a period of cold weather which saw significant snowfalls take place. The Hottentots Holland mountains were about 1/3 covered in snow, which is quick thick for the area.

Heavy rainfalls are also forecast to occur through Saturday in many places in the Cape Town area with 24 hour totals reaching in excess of 60mm in Grabouw. It should be great for those wanting to visit the snow, Sunday may be the day to head out to Ceres, though the main rainfall itself will probably occur on late Saturday through early Sunday.

For those worrying about the weather for the World Cup Final, you need not worry. The cold front will pass through to the east of the country and exit on Monday. It's not expected to bring any rain to the Gauteng region, and the forecast for Johannesburg, while cold is a dry one.

The first named storm of the Atlantic 2010 season has formed. The system, previously allocated as Invest 93L has spent quite some time lingering around the Caribbean not really doing much at all, causing some frustration to those hurricane tracking weather enthusiasts. Though on Saturday 26 June the system was finally named after Recon went in and found tropical storm force winds associated with it. It was only just declared a tropical depression on Friday and only spent a few hours as one before being upgraded.

The track of tropical storm Alex has trended further west with almost each model run over the past few days, originally with the EURO model forecasting a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, making landfall near the Florida panhandle. Though now the system is forecast to first make landfall in the Yucatan Peninsula, before reaching the gulf as a weakened tropical depression, and then regaining tropical storm and even category 1 hurricane status just before making landfall in Mexico. Though Texas should still keep an eye on this system as guidence is often changed as upper steering currents are quite unpredictable, as is all weather.

This will mark the beginning of what could potentially be a very active hurricane season. Sea surface temperatures have been extremely high throughout spring and continue to be far above normal so far this summer too. Shear is somewhat relaxed, though still occasionally present thanks to a few troughs. The next area of interest is the area marked 94L which has some potential for development, though a 'fish' storm would be most likely.

Cape Town got a taste of winter in it's purest form over the past few days, with a strong cold front making landfall on Sunday the 13th June. By Monday 14th, snow had already plastered much of the higher mountain peaks.

Freezing levels around Cape Town were as low as 1200m, with a bit of snow apparently reported on table mountain too. As can be seen from the above picture the Hottentots Holland mountain ranges also collected their fair share of snow.

More snow was likely during the night of Monday through Tuesday morning where-after the temperatures are expected to rise a bit. Maximum temperatures for Monday in Cape Town were 12`C which is typically around the lowest day time maximum Cape Town receives. Though it is important to note that it's only the beginning of June and winter has only been with us a mere few weeks, so things are likely to get worse (better?) weather wise as the more intense cold fronts make landfall.

The current cold front, despite bringing extremely cold temperatures, did not have a very strong pressure gradient and thus winds were kept down to about 50km/h as opposed to the storms which often bring 65km/h to 75km/h winds to the Cape. With a public holiday coming up on Wednesday I'm sure many may be heading to Ceres in the hopes of spending a day in the snow, should it last that long.