Mother City visit: Relentless rain and driving winds

There’s a moment of silence now. The kind of silence that gets louder with each passing second, until once again being broken by the roar of a Northerly gale against the window of my bedroom.

It is 6:30 in the morning on Sunday. I have been in bed since last night – I couldn’t tell you how much of that time I have actually slept.

The storm which, for the whole of Saturday had been touted as “the worst is yet to come” by locals, eventually struck around the time I went to bed. For the whole night the wind has tried to remove the roof of my parents house. Rain – and more recently hail – has hammered against the window pains with such force that the sound has become just a constant roar of noise, a cocophony of rattling, hammering, beating and banging as the water is thrown against the glass by the raging wind.

I have just looked outside the window – fearful of what I might see, but the sun appears to have been too scared to wake up this morning, and it is still dark outside.

Cape Town is already soaked to the skin from a very wet winter, and the ground is very close to saturated. I cannot see how the rain of the last 7 hours could not have caused flooding – and possibly severe flooding. And I cannot see how the wind has not caused damage to homes and businesses – and particularly to those living in the informal settlements around Cape Town.

I am in a brick and mortar house in Tableview – and I feel fortunate to still be in Tableview, and not to have been transported to Muizenberg like some modern day Dorothy.

It would be a miracle of quite some order if the Mother City has come through the night with just minor damage. I fear what dawn’s light may reveal.