The "Big Snow" in 1981

This week was the anniversary 10th of September of the Snow we had in Johannesburg in 1981, majority of us kids had never seen snow in our lives before, so it really was a novelty.

I remember the week so well, the week before we celebrated Spring day and it was starting to get warmer, the blossoms were out.  I remember leaving for College on the morning of the 10th, there was no sign of a cold weather and it was rather warm.

I caught the Nr. 45 bus from Linmeyer to Eloff Street in Johannesburg, and as we drove through Rosettenville the sky was absolutely black!  We got to college, it was situated towards the end of Eloff street towards the station and we were on the 11th floor!


The snow started lightly, we were all looking out the window until it started coming down much heavier, then when it started to settle we took this opportunity to make snowballs and start throwing them down at the people in the street below.

There was absolute Chaos and the Principal said that only the kids whose parents said they could go home could go home, but I think we all just took this opportunity to bolt.

In the side road "Post Street" running down to Risi Avenue, some kids had rolled a GIANT snowball in the middle of the road, so no cars could get up or down.    A week later it still hadn't quite thawed out and the Fire Brigade had to use pick axes to smash it and get it to melt.

I would love to hear about your stories from the Snow in 1981 in Johannesburg!


It's amazing how to this day, 38 years later everyone who was around that day have their own stories to tell.   We were lucky living in the South of Johannesburg as we had more snow than anywhere else and it lasted for at least 2 days!  I heard that in the Northern suburbs it didn't even really settle.

I found this really cool website of Snow in South Africa from 1853 - 2014, some really good photos on the website as well.