It feels like I am sitting in a marble cake of swirling temperatures. As the wind swings from landward to seaward and back again, I have the curious experience of having a front that is cooled while my back warms up – like a lizard swaying through moist grass on a sunny day.
At 5.30 am today it was too hot to open the doors and windows – a novel experience for me in Sea Point, where the sea breeze and frequent fogs ease you gently into a hot day.
I could not help thinking: This is the future, and it is terrifying, and it is here now.
The berg wind – that hot breath blowing off the vast buttress of Table Mountain – is the victor, and it is our fate today. We are staggering through a heat wave – defined in South Africa as at least three consecutive days of temperatures that are 5°C or more above the average maximum for a region.
I listen to an interview with a senior forecaster from South African Weather Services, who downplays things a bit, saying this is the norm for this time of year, the climate of the Western Cape is preparing for its winter rainfall.
But Cape Town did breach a temperature record yesterday, with a high of 40°C, says another SAWS forecaster on SABC TV, exceeding the temperature recorded in March 2017. Alexander Bay, to the far north up the West Coast, broke a 30-year record with a sizzling 44°C.
The pattern of the weather systems might be normal for this time of year: high pressure in the upper atmosphere that pushes air down towards the ground, heating it as it goes, and north-east to easterly winds blowing across the country, bringing the heat of the interior to the coast and intensifying the high pressure system.
Remember, though, that daily weather is occurring against a background pattern already changed by global heating. You cannot be racing past 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and claim that the changing average does not affect the extremes.
Vox Weather meteorologist Michelle du Plessis tells Cape Talk’s Lester Kiewiet that Cape Town’s average maximum temperature for March is 25°C. So, at 40°C, we are 15 degrees above the norm.
Friday will bring some relief – for now. We don’t know, exactly, about the future. But we know the trends and we feel them on our skin today. We will need cool minds connected to warm hearts to navigate what lies ahead.