INSIGHTS

Sunny day flooding

Aug 23, 2025 | Climate Crisis, Impacts

The southern coast of the Western Cape in South Africa is not a stranger to sunny day flooding.

When new or full moon high tides reach ~2m then inevitably there are flooded streets in towns on this stretch of coast.

In September 2023 there was a major event reported here resulting in substantial flood damage.

Today in the local traffic WhatsApp group someone posted:

Knysna
Waterfront drive flooded all the way past Foodlovers
Salt water

On the westside of Waterfront Drive it looked like this:

Here is the land projected to be below the annual flood level by 2030 in this area:

Not sure what they do about this, but unless they come up with some plan, pretty quickly, there are going to be stranded assets in these areas!

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