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South Africa: Mountain tops of Lesotho under snow
Mon. May 21, 2007 03:19 pm.- By Bonny Apunyu. -
(SomaliNet) Following snowfalls the mountaintops of Lesotho were blanketed in white at the weekend. Missionary pilots battled to operate in the south of the country.
"Things seem alright on the Bloemfontein side of the country but there's cold weather coming up from Grahamstown," said Melvin Peters of Mission Aviation Fellowship shortly after coming into Maseru from the mountain airstrip of Manamaneng on Monday morning.
Peters said two of his colleagues were battling to get out of airstrips in the south.
He said the temperature he read on his analogue thermometer read minus 18 degrees at
12 800 feet.
"That's the coldest I've ever seen it in seven years," said the Canadian pilot whose daily runs in Lesotho involve corkscrew landings at airstrips deep in the Maluti mountains in weather conditions that can see visibility drop in little time.
Peters' job on Monday involved bringing a woman to hospital in Maseru from Manameng.
"She had a broken leg and there was a hole in the cast. They didn't want to deal with it in the mountains."
Manamaneng is close to Sani Pass, the road link between Lesotho and KwaZulu-Natal.
"It was very windy. I had a 45-knot tail wind," said Peters, who has to always be weary of not risking flying into what he and his colleagues call "a granite cloud" - a cloud covered peak.
On the South African side of the border, Underberg resident Robin Guy said snow had fallen on the mountain tops overnight following a weekend of warm berg winds.
In the Eastern Cape there were reports of farmers tackling snowy roads to get their children to boarding school in Queenstown on Monday morning.
At lunchtime, Steynsburg farmer Ivan Dell said sleet was falling over his farm, the night's snow having cleared.-Sapa
News Category: Africa
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