The recent rains have helped to steady the dam levels this past week, the City of Cape Town said in a statement on Monday.

Dams that supply Cape Town have declined by only 0.1 percent over the past week to 52.1 percent of storage capacity.

“Cape Town’s collective water consumption for the past week decreased significantly to 536-million litres per day. The decline in consumption is [a] testament to the City of Cape Town’s residents’ water-wise behaviour. The City would like to thank residents for their great savings efforts,” the statement read.

“Capetonians have done well to remain within the target of 650-million litres of collective usage per day. This will help the City’s dams to recover and to build a solid foundation for a more water-sensitive city in years to come.”

Cape Town breathed a sigh of welcome relief following heavy rainfall overnight on Sunday into Monday morning last week.

Last week, the five dams that supply the city were  52.2 percent of storage capacity. The overall storage capacity marked an improvement over the situation last year which saw dam levels at only 24 percent of storage capacity.