From Snow to Sunshine: SA's Cold Snap Finally Breaks This Weekend
After a brutal week of snow, flooding and multiple severe weather warnings, South Africa is set for a dramatic turnaround this weekend, with Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban all warming up steadily into next week.
South Africans can put the extra blankets away. After a punishing stretch of winter weather that saw snow shut down roads in the Eastern Cape, damaging winds batter the coastline, and a string of severe weather warnings issued almost daily, the country is finally set for a clean break in the weather this weekend.
Johannesburg leads the thaw. After a cold start to the week, the city climbs from around 9°C on Thursday to 11°C on Friday, 13°C on Saturday, 14°C on Sunday, and a comfortable 16°C by Monday, with mostly sunny skies taking hold from Friday onward.
Cape Town, which bore the brunt of the coastal wind warnings earlier in the week, also turns a corner. Expect highs of around 16°C on Friday and 18°C on Saturday, dipping slightly to 15°C on Sunday before climbing again to 19°C on Monday. Rain chances stay low through the stretch.
Durban stays the mildest of the three, as usual, holding in the low to mid twenties. Highs sit around 20°C on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then edge up to 21°C on Monday, with mostly clear skies and only a trace of rain expected.
Just as notable as the rising temperatures is what's missing from the forecast. There's no further snow and no significant rain in the near term outlook for any of the three cities.
That's a sharp contrast to the past week, which saw an orange level 6 warning for disruptive snow across several Eastern Cape municipalities, communities left temporarily inaccessible, yellow level warnings for damaging winds threatening navigation along the KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape coastlines, and localized flooding risk in Mpumalanga.
Thursday itself will still carry some of the outgoing system's trailing effects nationally, with fine, warm conditions in the west while the east stays cooler and cloudier, and isolated showers lingering along the eastern escarpment. But forecasters say that's the last gasp of the pattern. From Friday onward, dry, mild and increasingly sunny conditions are expected to dominate across the country's major centres.
The shift lines up with the broader seasonal picture too. August is traditionally the month South Africa pivots from winter into spring, and this weekend looks set to be the moment that transition becomes obvious in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban alike, a timely reprieve after one of the more disruptive weather weeks the country has seen this winter.
