Batten the Hatches Me Hearties!
This dark and cold winter is about to up the ante as a giant people-eating purple-seething pressure punch raunches across the coast today, backed up by another beast tomorrow, writes Spike
This is a seriously strong storm that started out as a large, weak 1008mb coastal low burbling softly over the Southern Cape on Thursday. Yesterday, it detached from the coast and deepened, and now its consolidating and deepening just off the PE coast, and a sausage of vicious S to SE winds spew giant stormseas at the Western and Southern Cape today, blasted ashore by vicious winds from 40kts+ and getting stronger all day and going nuclear overnight as the storm continues to deepen SE of the country.
A wodge of purple mayhem shreds Knysna by lunchtime, and rapidly rampages eastward this afternoon. Put it this way, after a kiff glassy light offshore start, the Rip Curl event in Port Alfred is going to be blown out by 2pm this afternoon.
The angle of this swell will light up - if not blast asunder - sheltered surf spots that rarely break, but beware, this is possibly even too big for those, except for the brief buildup in size, and when it ebbs after the storm passes. False Bay is going to be dik, but remember that as the storm moves east, the wind increases, so the bulk hits the East Coast beyond.
By the early hours of Sunday, the storm has deepened into a proper 993mb and winds winds are blitzing the Eastern Cape with absolute carnage, engulfing a huge chunk of SA from Knysna to Port Shepstone with winds gusting to 60kts, particularly bad around the East London and Wild Coast.
On top of that, another gigantic southern ocean storm has formed far below the country, and the first storm literally passes the baton to the other, with a second severe W buster kind of backing up the first, and keeping the white caps chundering from late Sunday well into Monday.
With the length of the wind fetch of the second storm extending pretty much ALL the way to the ice shelf of Antarctica. Winds blowing up to double galeforce across a vast chunk of ocean for 2,880 nautical miles? Yoh! Expect absolutely massive seas off the East Coast on Sunday, and especially Monday!
Surf-wise, pretty much the whole coast will be out of control. This is too much of everything. The window for those mystic spots that love the S or SE swell direction will perhaps be best after the storm has passed when the swell is dropping.
