Snow in Johannesburg

Now that is not something you see very often but it snowed in Johannesburg yesterday.
In my neighborhood there is a large school and they let the children out to play in the snow. You could hear the kids play from far they were so exited.
I had an appointment at somebody's office and when the snow started everybody stopped work and went outside to take photos on their cell phones and generally stand out in the snow and experience it. Some people from other parts of Africa who were there too had never seen snow before.
Everybody came back in saying how pretty it was. As a Canadian I was totally underwhelmed by the few flakes and less than an inch of snow on the ground at the end but it was great to see how exited people got.

To put things into perspective, according to South African Weather Service records, it has only snowed in Johannesburg on 22 other days in the last 103 years and newspapers report that: " Snow is a rare occurrence in Gauteng (the tiny province of seven thousand square miles, which consists of Johannesburg, Pretoria and their "suburbs"), with snowfall having been experienced in May 1956, August 1962, June 1964, September 1981 and on June 27 2007. September 1981 has the greatest snowfall on record, with statistics showing snowfall accumulating up to 10 centimetres across the province."

As it happens the morning of June 27th I was landing in Johannesburg and a driver from work was meant to pick me up to take me to the office to work right away and he was very very late because he wasn't sure what to use to shovel the full one centimeter of snow in his driveway. As a Canadian I couldn't help but feel totally unsympathetic about it...not that I said anything at the time.