Above are some images taken from my cellphone this morning, 10 July 2009. There was a brief and unexpected period of mammatus clouds which formed at around 12:15pm and lasted only around 10 minutes. The cause for the mammatus clouds was a cut-off low approaching the Western Cape from the West-South-West, this cut off low was creating instability and altocumulus were present along with some cumulonimbus.

It is interesting to note that mammatus clouds are extremely rare in the Cape Town area and while there are only few reports of these clouds Cape Town saw an extreme case of mammatus in the middle of April this year, the mammatus today were nothing like April's but still provided some excitement to a rather dull period in terms of weather events in South Africa.

Looking ahead the next week should be a fairly rainy one as a cold front will arrive in the Western Cape over the next 12 to 36 hours, The South African Weather Service is forecasting a period of 6 days of rainfall with Sunday the 12th July bringing a possibility of moderate falls of rain to places.