Hail, damaging winds and rain to hit parts of SA this weekend

The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has issued a watch for hail, damaging winds and heavy downpours this weekend in parts of South Africa.

A yellow level 2 warning has been issued for showers and thunderstorms, with the possibility of heavy downpours, hail, damaging winds and excessive lighting in parts of Eastern Cape from Friday going into Saturday and Sunday morning.

Localised damages to infrastructure, settlements, property, vehicles and livestock are some of the impacts the weather conditions may bring.

Others include “localised short-term service (both communication and power interruptions) and localised flash flooding of susceptible roads and low lying areas”, said the Weather Service.

“There are active severe storms in the southern parts of North West and southern parts of Free State as well as southern Gauteng,” warned Bransby Bulo, senior forecaster for the Weather Service, on Thursday evening.

“In the Western Cape, the cut-off low pressure system will bring rain to the province from Friday and strong winds in the western part of the country. Rain is going to start in the afternoon in the Western Cape from Friday afternoon until Saturday. It will start to move out to the south east by Sunday. We’ve got a number of alerts like strong winds along the south west coast and over the interior, heavy rainfall over the Garden Route area as well as severe thunderstorms over the western interior,” said the Weather Service.

Strong to gale force winds of up to 75km/h in places along the southern, south-western and south-eastern coastline are expected.

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“Upper cut-off low is expected to affect large portion of SA with widespread showers and thundershowers from Thursday into weekend. Strong winds expected over the Western and Northern Cape interiors, plus gale to strong gale force winds along the coast. Rough, choppy seas expected off Western Cape coastlines,” said the Weather Service.

The weather will then get better on Sunday afternoon, said Bulo.