Rare snowfall in South Africa delights and surprises – in pictures

The rare sight of snow has delighted residents of South Africa’s biggest city, Johannesburg.

While some parts of South Africa “regularly receive snowfall over the southern hemisphere winter months around June to August”, said Reuters, Johannesburg last saw heavy snow on its pavements in August 2012. South of the city, children were making snowballs and snow angels in a school playground, some seeing snow for the first time. One resident told The Guardian it was “pure magic”.

The snowfall was caused by a cold front that reached Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria, according to the South African Weather Service (Saws). The cold front has been “morphing into a weather system known as a ‘cut-off low’”, said Africa News.

Many seemed “enchanted by the rare sight”, said BBC News correspondents in Johannesburg. “No major disruptions have been caused by the snowfall at this stage,” a spokesperson for Saws told the news site. It is “not clear” what role, if any, climate change has played.

Weather experts “have advised initiation schools in the Eastern Cape to be extra vigilant”, said the news site, as they “keep watch” over teenage boys undergoing traditional Xhosa circumcision manhood rites on “isolated mountain sides across the province”.

The snow is unlikely to last, a professor of physical geography at the University of Witwatersrand told South Africa’s Times newspaper. But for now, residents can enjoy the fleeting novelty, before it melts away.