Short-lived winter snowfalls over Drakensberg range

Sentinel-3 SLSTR RBT & OLCI FR acquired on 07 July 2020 from 07:34:36 to 07:37:36 UTC
Sentinel-3 SLSTR RBT & OLCI FR acquired on 15 July 2020 from 07:27:08 to 07:30:08 UTC
Sentinel-2 MSI acquired on 15 July 2020 at 07:46:21 UTC
Sentinel-3 SLSTR RBT acquired on 16 July 2020 at 08:02:29 UTC
Author(s): Sentinel Vision team, VisioTerra, France - svp@visioterra.fr
Keyword(s): Mountain range, snowfalls, precipitations, melt, erosion, cliff, Lesotho, South Africa.
Fig. 1 - S3 OLCI + SLSTR (07.07.2020) - OLCI + SLSTR combined on the fly to show the Drakensberg mountains on 7 July.
Fig. 2 - On 15 July, winter snow fell over this range located in Lesotho & South Africa, mostly over 2000m high.
The state of Lesotho is landlocked lying entirely over 1400m high, fully enclaved within South Africa.
Fig. 3 - S3 SLSTR (15.07.2020) - A wildfire was burning at the north-east limit of the range at the same time.
Fig. 4 - S3 SLSTR (16.07.2020) - The snow cover was short-lived as shows this thermal image acquired the day after.
Fig. 5 - S2 (15.07.2020) - The state of Lesotho is landlocked lying entirely over 1400m high, fully enclaved within South Africa.
The Drakensberg formed as Antarctica rifted away from the rest of Gondwana. Later as it was uplifted, erosion removed several kilometres of layers from this area, forming valleys and cliffs in the plateau. It is now tilted, higher and steeper sloped at east.