Lots of rainy cool weather in Pretoria lately which is wonderful, especially since it was preceded in early January by 40+ degree days that shattered several temperature records across the country. It even made the newspapers:

Fireplaces are your friend. Close all the doors and stay in the room with your source of heat. Usually takes about 10 minutes before you start sweating.

Is that on day or night? Close to sea level or somewhere high up in the mountains?

When I was in Montreal in late January one year, it seemed to me night temperatures would easily go down to -25 C or so, but then it would warm up up to 0 degrees or so daytime. So there was quite a high disparity between the day and night temperatures, which is not what I am used to in Finland. Logical explanation is that Montreal is quite a bit more to the south than Helsinki (about as south as e.g. Paris), so the sun affects the temperatures more especially in winter.

There should be one weather girl.

Not at those temperatures. When it is quite cold, the snow is light and powdery, not sticking to anywthing. I prefer it that way too, much easier to brush the snow off your car in the mornings, almost like blowing away tiny feathers, glimmering in the sun.


Yeah but she wouldn't be wearing bikinis, too cold for that.

She will make it hot.

I found her!

Its a bit <whinge whinge whinge> here, looking to get more <whinge whinge> by the end of the week with possibility of heavy <whinging>.

Bring on the ice age!

There are three things at play here:

1) It rains all the time here but over the last couple of months we were hit by three storms and I think we had something like a years worth of rainfall in a very short space of time (I seem to remember the news saying we had that in one weekend..)

2) We're ridiculously under prepared for any weather event; rain, snow or heatwave we always get caught unawares (though we're getting a little better at it, we had three inches of snow here on Saturday and the county didn't grind to a halt)

3) The government canceled most of the planned flood defences they were supposed to build after the last time this happened (particularly in the North), because they are a useless bunch of arseholes who don't really give a shit (particularly about the North)


Also, it's stopped snowing here but there is still snow on the ground and it's bitterly cold. So about the same as everyone else it seems.

I was confused there for a while, until I realised You're in South Africa and Afrikaans is a fork of Dutch (the newspaper looked like Dutch but the temperatures didn't make sense for the Netherlands at this time of year).

Yes, the 'Beeld' newspaper is a popular afrikaans newspaper over here :)

Yes, but it really is a beautiful scrotum....I think. We are still in a whiteout. Day five I think; I've lost count. :P

If you look outside, does it look like yet? Or is it still just [url=http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/1/30/1422630061468/Scottish-Polar-Bears-009.jpg]these two goofballs loitering in your parking lot?

The 2nd one.