Rainy reprieve for Nieu-bethesda district

Callum and Kyla North had good reason to take out their umbrellas at last where 52mm was measured on ‘The Rest’. Jean Retief took this photo of the river running past their farm, Klawervlei. NIEU-BETHESDA — After months of unseasonably dry weather with little precipitation at all, the Nieu-bethesda district welcomed some pregnant clouds and stormy skies that yielded good rains this week.

The usually green village has been getting progressively drier and there have been concerns that even the furrows that have not run dry in living history, have dropped in level.

The rain arrived in the form of storms which dumped substantial amounts of precipitation over the village over 4 days.

At de Toren farm, one shower was so intense that substantial amounts of rock and sand on the steep mountain slopes were washed onto the road below, rendering the pass almost closed on Saturday morning.

Fortunately, G&S Civils were quick to attend to landslide and had removed it with their grader by the afternoon.

After the storms, a soft rain fell for the following few days, hopefully topping up the groundwater level.

Talk around town was exclusively about rain - ‘How much fell with you?’, ‘Is the river running?’, ‘What did you measure?.’

The Sneeuberg mountains serve as the catchment area for the Gats River which in turn flows into Nqweba Dam.

Hopefully, over the next few weeks, more rains will arrive to begin to fill this frighteningly low water source which is the life-blood of Graaff Reinet. Stones and boulders blocked de Toren pass after the downpour.

Karen Schoeman was delighted by these heavy clouds which brought the rain over Nieu-bethesda.