"Cape Doctor" (usually The Cape Doctor or "die Kaapse dokter" in Afrikaans) is the local name for the strong, persistent and dry south-easterly wind that blows on the South African coast from spring to late summer (September to March in the southern hemisphere). It is known as the Cape Doctor because it has long been held to clear Cape Town of pollution and 'pestilence'.
Although the wind smites a wide area of the sub-continent, it is notorious especially in and around the Cape Peninsula, where it can be unpleasantly strong and irritating. The 'Cape Doctor' is to some extent an obsolescent term; many now simply call it the "South-Easter". An ironic fact is that the meteorological records for Cape Town show that the north-west winds of winter can be far stronger and more destructive than the south-Easter.
Although usually accompanied by fair weather, if the SE wind is accompanied by a cut-off low as occasionally happens in the spring and autumn months, this can cause heavy rains to fall over the Western Cape. This phenomenon is popularly known as a black South-Easter. The Laingsburg flood of 24 and 25 January 1981 is an example of this.
Famous quotes containing the words cape and/or doctor:
“The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away, and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moo-cow.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is an optimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness—physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)