Heavy Snowfall in South Africa

When you have an area that are not used to this, it shuts the whole area down.

here in the states, when Texas gets a ‘freak’ snow storm, they not only don’t have equipment to clear the snow, but the vehicles not only aren’t equipped to drive in snow as northern states are, but the drivers are not experienced to drive.

schools and businesses will basically close with they have a snow fall of 2”. Which northern states would never consider,

In the UK, we have snow almost every year & it still causes chaos. It's generally not regular enough or severe enough to warrant the investment in infrastructure so we muddle through.

Geographically speaking, the UK is in a interesting location due to the influence of the Gulf Stream it’s a lot more milder.

where London is 10 degrees further north than Chicago… but Chicago has Lake Michigan to its north where the polar wind can come screaming down unabated.

Where in the states like Texas things like snow shovels, possible portable generators, etc… sell out immediately. Not that they stock a lot on their shelves… along they don’t snow tires on their vehicles more or less have all season tires. Hospitals become stressed by the influx of car accidents due to the weather.

Where Africa I can’t see it would make it through unscathed.

thanks to PWSlack for the update…

Being the devils advocate,…

Phoenix Arizona has a record of 13 days in a row of above 100ºF temperature… don’t forget to put on your SPC 50 sunscreen when going outside…

I need a couple of pairs of snowshoes...anybody...?

As background, the N3 is one of the busiest highways in South Africa. The roads were mostly covered by less than 500mm, not 2m, though there were isolated cases of heavy drifts elsewhere. Problems started when the first truck had an accident on Van Reenens pass, with lots of vehicles following. Then other vehicles got stuck behind it, etc., etc. It is quite late in spring for such heavy snowfalls - the previous week saw temperatures at 30°C! It is complicated in that the pass is split at the top between two provinces, with seemingly no national coordination there.

And yes, we are not really used to snow here, and even less to black ice. The roads authorities should have closed the pass sooner, like they have done in the past (I used to live in an adjacent town).

BTW, when this happened in ~1996, we welded some steel plate onto a diesel locomotive to go and rescue a stranded passenger train. It was interesting to see the MacGyver snow plough in action! The driver explained how weird it was to ride where you cannot see the rails at all. We had to add a caboose with staff to cut down the black wattles en-route, as the branches simply collapsed onto the overhead traction wires under the snow.

Covered less than 500mm, (that’s 20”) and being in Africa, that probably not powder or lake effect snow, that’s probally wet snow. Putting snow drifts aside, That would strand everybody, no matter where they lived.

Snow and ice is a big enough problem where we're used to it.

Sure it's an eye popper what happens in the south over a cm of snow, but unsanded roads with a little glib of ice a mm would be lots are deadly everywhere.

Every year here, when the nights start dropping below freezing and before they start regular road treatments, it's treacherous. It seems like they wait until there are accidents before they get up to speed on the job. But perhaps there's also a salt buildup on the roads that prevents accidents later on, and makes it less effective on the front end of the season.

No frosts here yet this fall but normally the first flakes of snow or sleet will be seen on Oct 31.