Snow Watch 2011

There was fresh snowfall probably on the 25th of June. This seemed only to fall on the Eastern Cape Drakensberg and the Thaba Putsoa Range in Western Lesotho. See the two pictures below from 22 June and 27 June (the clearest days before and after). The snow already on the ground in Northern Lesotho and the KZN Drakensberg before the 25th seems to be the same after.

22 June


27 June


The snow is still hanging around, amazingly enough, especially in the Northern parts. If you went to Afriski or up the Chain Ladders you will still see plenty.

Afriski Update:

"Extreme weather conditions have arrived at the resort. High winds, mist, snow and ice have closed the road at the top of the Mahlasela pass"

A fair amount of fresh snow fell yesterday!

Looks like the Southern Berg wasn't left out this time!

The sat images are made available by NASA. Two satellites fly over daily, and different sets of images are made available. Scroll to the bottom of this page and you will see an menu item called "Maloti-Drakensberg Satellite Images" which I've added there for convenience (as well as some webcams). This calls up the Maloti-Drakensberg subset. Better quality images are normally found in the SouthAfrica1 subset, but you have to zoom in on the Berg (rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?subset=FAS_SouthAfrica1).

@PeterHowells: the Kokstad/Matatiele area just had clouds in that image. They normally have a puffy, fuzzy appearance, whereas the snow has sharp definitions. Have a look at the images in 7-2-1 and 3-6-7 colour (see NASA image subsets), as this brings out the snow in turquoise and red respectively.

Hehe I think you mean thanks Intrepid


Todays image is a lot less ambiguous, if its white, its snow!