Editorial Policy — weather.capetown

Our purpose

weather.capetown exists to give Capetonians and visitors the most useful, accurate and locally-grounded weather information available. Our editorial decisions are made independently of commercial relationships. Our goal is to be the source you trust before stepping out the door — and the source you turn back to when somebody else told you it would be a calm afternoon at Camps Bay.

Accuracy

We're meticulous about facts.

Weather data comes from established meteorological sources: Open-Meteo (which aggregates ECMWF, DWD and SAWS), the South African Weather Service for warnings, NOAA wave models for marine forecasts, and the South African Navy Hydrographic Office for tides.
Local knowledge claims (microclimate behaviour, neighbourhood character, business hours) are written or reviewed by team members who personally know the location, and verified before publication. Where we describe a beach as "exposed to the South Easter," that's because one of us has been blown across it.
Numbers and figures (temperatures, wind speeds, climate averages, sea temperatures) are sourced from SAWS climatological records, CSIR coastal monitoring, and primary measurement archives. We round to one decimal place where the underlying data supports it and use whole numbers otherwise. We do not invent precision.
Time-sensitive information (opening hours, prices, regulations, operator details) is reviewed quarterly and dated on the page. We aim to refresh anything older than six months before it appears in our top-twenty most-read pages.
Historical and contextual claims (e.g. about the Cape Doctor's name, the geological history of the lagoon, weather-related events) are referenced inline or sourced from named publications. We do not present folklore as fact, although we'll happily explain folklore as folklore.

Authorship and expertise

Every article on weather.capetown is written, reviewed and signed by named human authors with relevant expertise. Most articles are bylined "By the weather.capetown team" because they're collaborative; the team members who contribute are listed on our about page, where their qualifications and relevant experience are spelled out. Single-author articles carry the author's name.

Our content team includes:

An atmospheric scientist with eight years at the South African Weather Service and an MSc from the University of Cape Town.
A surf and kite instructor with twenty years' experience on Cape Town's coast, with current International Surfing Association and International Kiteboarding Organization certifications.
A travel writer who has covered Cape Town for fifteen years for local and international publications including Getaway, Travel + Leisure, and Wanted.
A software engineer responsible for our data pipeline, forecast integrations, and microclimate sensor network.

Outside contributors are credited where they appear; their qualifications and any potential conflicts of interest are disclosed at the head of the article.

Methodology — how we decide a verdict

Our "Go / Maybe / No" verdicts on the homepage and activity pages are an interpretation, not a calculation. We start with forecast data, apply per-activity thresholds developed with team experts, and then a human reviews the output before it is published. The broad logic:

Beach day: sustained wind under 20 km/h, no swell or rip-current warning, UV index 5+, no advisory water quality issue at the named beach.
Mountain hike: visibility above 5 km, sustained wind under 40 km/h on the plateau, thunderstorm probability under 30%, plateau temperature 12–28°C.
Surf: wave height 0.8–2.5 m at the named break, offshore or cross-shore wind, swell period above 8 seconds. Higher / lower thresholds at advanced-level breaks.
Kitesurf: wind 15–30 knots sustained, side-shore or onshore direction at the named spot, no lightning risk in the next 6 hours.
Wine farms: air temperature 16–30°C in the target valley, no severe weather warning, no road closures.
Cable car: running per the official Table Mountain Aerial Cableway feed.

We adjust thresholds when we get feedback. If we're calling "Go" on days locals tell us were miserable, we tighten; if we're calling "No" on days Capetonians clearly enjoyed, we loosen. Threshold changes are logged in our internal changelog and surfaced on our methodology page when a change is significant.

Fact-checking process

Every substantive article — neighbourhood guides, activity guides, explainers, monthly tourist guides — goes through three checks before publication:

Author check. The author verifies every numeric or factual claim against the source listed in their notes.
Local check. A second team member who knows the location personally reads the article and flags anything that doesn't match their lived experience.
Senior check. A senior editor reads for clarity, voice, and any unsupported claim. They are the one who hits publish.

For time-sensitive material (a specific opening hour, a current price, a regulation), the senior editor records the source URL and date in our internal review log. That log is what drives our quarterly refresh.

Sources

We disclose our data sources transparently:

Live forecast data: Open-Meteo API (aggregating DWD, ECMWF, SAWS).
Severe weather warnings: South African Weather Service (SAWS) official alerts.
Climate averages: SAWS climatological records (1961–2020 normals).
Sea temperature: NOAA satellite SST and CSIR coastal monitoring buoys.
Wave and swell: NOAA WaveWatch III, cross-referenced with local surf reports.
Tide: South African Navy Hydrographic Office (SANHO) tide tables.
Sunrise/sunset: Astronomical Almanac data, computed from NOAA solar position algorithms.
Air quality: City of Cape Town air-quality monitoring stations and the South African Air Quality Information System (SAAQIS).
Fire warnings: Western Cape Disaster Management and Working on Fire alerts.

Where we make claims that aren't from these sources, we cite them in the text or in an explanatory footnote.

Corrections

When we get something wrong — and we do, weather is uncertain and so are humans — we correct it openly.

Corrections are made in the affected article.
A dated correction note is added at the foot of the article describing what was wrong, what's right, and when the change was made.
Significant corrections (factual errors that materially changed the article's claims) are flagged at the top of the article for at least 30 days after correction.
Trivial typos and grammatical fixes are made silently.
If you spot an error, please email editorial@weather.capetown. We act on credible corrections within 48 hours, faster on safety-critical material.

We maintain a public corrections page (forthcoming) listing the past twelve months of significant fixes.

Independence and conflicts of interest

weather.capetown is funded by display advertising (Google AdSense), affiliate commissions on a small number of Cape Town operators we trust, and a newsletter sponsorship programme.

What this means:

We do not accept payment, gifts or hospitality in exchange for editorial coverage. Ever.
Affiliate relationships (where we earn a commission if you book through us) are disclosed at the point of recommendation, with the word "affiliate" clearly visible.
Newsletter sponsors are clearly marked as sponsored content — they do not influence our editorial recommendations and we do not let them see editorial copy before publication.
Our authors do not personally invest in or hold financial relationships with any tour operator, hotel or activity provider we cover. If a conflict develops, we disclose it inline or reassign the writer.
Display ads (Google AdSense) are programmatic — Google selects the ads, not us. We have no relationship with the advertisers shown and we sometimes don't like them either.
Family or personal relationships between a team member and an operator are disclosed in the relevant article and the writer is recused from the verdict.

How we handle commercial relationships

We may participate in:

Affiliate referrals — earning a commission if you book through our links to operators we'd genuinely recommend. Always disclosed.
Direct partnerships — working with reputable Cape Town operators on bookings or content. Always disclosed if it appears in editorial.
Newsletter sponsorship — clearly labelled "Sponsored" content in our newsletter, with the sponsor named.
Press hospitality (carefully). If we accept a press trip or operator-funded experience for research purposes, that's disclosed at the head of any article that draws on it. We retain full editorial control and the right to write a negative review.

What we will not do:

Accept payment to write a positive review.
Hide a commercial relationship.
Allow advertisers to influence our editorial verdicts.
Publish content disguised as editorial that is, in fact, paid promotion.
Recommend an operator we wouldn't use ourselves.

AI use

We use AI tools to help with research, idea generation, copy editing, alt text drafting, and the automated translation of forecast data into plain English. Every article on weather.capetown is written, reviewed and signed by named human authors who take responsibility for accuracy. Our specific policies:

We do not publish unedited AI-generated content.
We do not publish content that has not been fact-checked by a human.
AI is never used to invent facts, sources, quotes, business names, or events.
AI may be used to draft initial copy from a human author's notes, but the author rewrites and verifies before publication.
Verdict logic is rule-based, not LLM-based. We don't use generative AI to decide whether you should go to the beach.
Images on the site are either human-photographed (with a credit) or licensed stock. Where we use AI-generated imagery (currently nowhere), we will label it as such.

Reader-submitted content

We accept tips, spot reports, photographs and corrections from readers. Contributions are credited to the reader (or kept anonymous on request). We fact-check submitted material before publishing, and we hold reader-submitted content to the same accuracy standards as in-house material. By submitting, you confirm you have the rights to share what you send us; we'll only publish your name if you give us permission.

Privacy and ethics

We follow ethical standards in research and reporting:

We do not photograph or identify private individuals without permission.
We respect the privacy of sources and subjects.
We follow our privacy policy for handling reader information.
We avoid coverage that puts vulnerable people at risk — including, for example, identifying the exact location of nesting penguins outside the protected viewing areas at Boulders.

Safety-critical content

Some of our content is safety-relevant — surf, kitesurf, hiking, swimming, fire warnings. We treat that material with extra care:

Safety claims are reviewed by team members with relevant qualifications (ISA / IKO instructor for surf and kite; experienced mountain users for hiking; SLSA-trained lifesavers for swim safety where possible).
We do not minimise risk. If a hike is dangerous in certain conditions, we say so plainly.
We default to caution. Our verdicts will skew "No" when in doubt; we'd rather you not go on a borderline day than push you out the door.
Where official warnings (SAWS, NSRI, Working on Fire) supersede our verdicts, the official warning wins — and we surface it on the affected page.

Reader feedback

This is our policy, but our standards are also informed by you. If we fall short — too commercial, factually wrong, missing nuance, or just unhelpful — please tell us. Email editorial@weather.capetown. We will reply, and we will correct if you're right.

This editorial policy was last updated on 8 May 2026. By the weather.capetown team.