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4. Cape Agulhas weather

The weather at Cape Agulhas South Africa is much like the Mediterranean climate, with hot dry summers and cool wet winters. Prevailing winds blow from the southeast in the summer and the northwest in the winter.

It is in fact quite mild, with no temperature or rainfall extremes. The average rainfall is 500mm per annum, mostly received in winter.

Cape Agulhas is rough and storm-beaten, but not desolate. it's certainly not nearly as desolate a place as the other places that are described as being "the end of the earth".

The many shipwrecks here bear witnessto the mighty storms off the coast in this region.

At low tide the wreck of the "Meisho Maru" looms from the water.

View at the lighthouse of Cape Agulhas
L'Agulhas South Africa, Agulhas National Park
copyright © South African tourism

Temperature averages are:

January in midsummer, maximum 23,8˚ Celsius and minimum 17,7˚ Celsius.

July in midwinter, maximum 16,5˚Celsius and minimum 10,8˚Celsius.

The sea off Cape Agulhas is notorious for winter storms and mammoth rogue waves, which can range up to 30 metres (100 ft) high and can sink even large ships. These conditions are caused by a number of factors. The naturally strong winds of the roaring forties which blow from west to east and the cold Antarctic Circumpolar current flowing in the same direction, come up against the warmer Agulhas current in the region off the coast of Cape Agulhas.


Wreck of the "Meisho Maru" at Cape Agulhas South Africa
L,Agulhas South Africa, Agulhas National Park
Photograph by Nick Reed
These conflicting currents of water of different densities, and the west winds blowing against the Agulhas Current, can create extremely hazardous wave conditions; these are further exacerbated by the shallow waters of the Agulhas Bank, a broad, shallow part of the continental shelf which juts 250 kilometres (155 miles) south from cape Agulhas, after which it falls steeply away to the abyssal plain.






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2. National parks in South Africa
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3. Agulhas National Park
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4. Cape Agulhas weather