South Africa braces for more storms

AllAfrica.com, via the Cape Argus (South Africa): Two more cold fronts are heading towards battered Cape Town as mop-up operations continue in the wake of the weekend's raging storms. The first is expected to hit by Tuesday evening and the second by Thursday, but neither is expected to be as severe as the brutal beatings of the weekend.

On Monday, in the aftermath of the storm:

* A hunt for two men is continuing in deep snow on the Matroosberg near Ceres after they were reported missing on Sunday.

* Knocked-out traffic lights and flooded roads were expected to disrupt peak-hour traffic on Monday morning.

* Salvors were battling to cope with two large ships in peril.

* About 1 000 people across the city were displaced by wind and water damage to their homes.

…SA Weather Service forecaster Mark Todd, of the central forecasting office in Pretoria, said the weekend's weather was "easily one of the strongest storms in Cape Town in 10 years". Its wrath reached as far as Somerset West, where at least one roof blew off, as well as Melkbosstrand and Atlantis, where power was knocked out.

Blackouts hit more than 20 areas in Cape Town, including Fish Hoek, Newlands, Pinelands, Bellville, Bishopscourt, Rondebosch, Bonteheuwel, Milnerton and Silvertown. The City of Cape Town's public lighting manager Charles Kadalie said the outages had been caused by damage to overhead power lines from falling trees and branches, as well as and hail….

On a much sunnier day, the central area of Cape Town and the Waterfront Harbour as seen from Table Mountain. The Island on the left is Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was kept imprisoned for so many years. Shot by Andreas Tusche, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2