A severe cold front sweeping across South Africa since the weekend brought heavy snowfall which has led to road closures, power outages, and a fatal road accident, officials said.<\/p>\n
Five people were killed in a road accident along the N2 highway due to the adverse weather, Eastern Cape transport department spokesperson Unathi Binqose told local broadcaster Newzroom Afrika on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The South African Weather Service warned citizens late last week there would be a big drop in temperatures this week across the country, accompanied by disruptive rain, damaging winds, and snow over eastern areas.<\/p>\n
South Africa regularly receives snowfall during its winter months from June through August, with temperatures diving below zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n
Snow has been reported since Monday across provinces including Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State, prompting closures along sections of the N2 highway that connects the provinces, according to the KwaZulu-Natal transport department.<\/p>\n
Power utility Eskom said in a post on X that it was “experiencing a high number of customer calls nationally, due to widespread power outages caused by inclement weather.”<\/p>\n
More resources were being secured to ensure prompt resolution to the power outages, Eskom said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A severe cold front sweeping across South Africa since the weekend brought heavy snowfall which has led to road closures, power outages, and a fatal road accident, officials said. Five people were killed in a road accident along the N2 highway due to the adverse weather, Eastern Cape transport department spokesperson Unathi Binqose told local […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,30],"tags":[4095,1143,4094,122],"class_list":["post-16546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-free-state","tag-kwazulu-natal","tag-snowfall","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}