Now that was a wet month. My rain gauge recorded nearly 70% of 2022’s total precipitation in July 2024. Reservoirs in the Western Cape (nearly dry in 2017) are now overflowing, if not bursting their dam walls, and every time it rains in my neighbourhood, floodwater gushes skyward from storm drains.
Given that the period 2002 to 2022 recorded a majority of years with below average rainfall (12 out of 20), it is interesting to note heavy rains returning to Cape Town. Climate change indeed, but whether this is cyclical, or a one-way ticket, remains to be seen.
A sure sign a storm is coming: lumpy mammatus clouds hang off thunder clouds & forecast rain.
Rain is, of course, what everything in the fynbos has been waiting for. The great bulk of the southwestern Cape’s rain arrives in June, July and August, breaking what is effectively an annual drought (the so-called ‘summer’ from November to April). Most of the rain is delivered via ‘cold fronts’ – wet, cold and windy storms that traditionally lash the Cape in winter. Rumbling off the Atlantic Ocean, a cold front persists for several days, after which the sun – and everything else – beams in appreciation.
The storm arrives: heavy nimbostratus clouds pregnant with moisture; the small white clouds in front of the grey wall presage imminent rain.
Annual rainfall varies around the immediate area. I live on the Cape Flats and get about a metre (three feet) a year; move a mile closer to Table Mountain and now you’ll get half as much again. Hike to the top of the mountain and you’ll record two and a half metres (seven feet) of rain annually. Whatever the amount, the winter rains bring immediate relief to the landscape that needs it most: those areas of the mountain that burned in the recent summer months when heat, aridity and wind were at their most intense. The germination and growth of new seeds and bulbs has already been triggered by the fire; it is the arrival of the rains that better guarantees their survival.
Resembling the flames that consumed their mother plant, the first leaves of the next generation flicker from the soaked sand.
Its appearance entirely dependent on fire, the Fire Lily (Cyrtanthus ventricosus) provides the first burst of colour as the rains begin.
Having provided post-fire plants with water to fuel their growth, the rains now spread a fuzz of green across the landscape; grasses and annuals emerge, kicking off food webs that involve everything from bees and butterflies to antelope and ostriches. The change from summer brown to winter green is best seen on the coast where the Cape’s lesser-known biomes – strandveld and sandveld – are at both their greenest and most colourful.
Africa’s biggest antelope – the Eland – takes advantage of the new greenery covering a granite hill (a koppie) in a swathe of strandveld.
Another winter inhabitant of the granite koppie – Lachenalia pustulata; the specific name does indeed refer to pimples or bumps.
Closer to the coast, even more grasses and herbaceous plants appear after the rain, attracting herds of gemsbok, an animal usually associated with semi-deserts.
Up in the fynbos-covered mountains however, there are no grasses or annuals to be noted in these winter months. What happens however, is a sudden lurch to the yellow part of the colour spectrum: various flowering proteas, daisies, sorrels and snapdragons all burst into yellow, adding an extraordinary golden sheen to the fynbos – a Winter of Gold.
Where to see it all? For the best post-rain flowers, it’s hard to beat the West Coast National Park (avoid sunny weekends if you don’t like crowds) but closer to Cape Town is the ever-dependable Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve – the best place to see the golden winter of fynbos as well as coastal flowers. June and July are generally the wettest and coldest months; August and September are a bit warmer, less wet and have the greatest displays of winter flowers.
Early winter morning in the Cape of Good Hope Reserve & thousands of Sunshine Conebushes (Leucadendron laureolum) light up the landscape.
With the Atlantic Ocean behind him, a Kudu bull is surrounded by the fresh green of the West Coast National Park.