Sunday, July 13, 2014

major storms, flooding and general mayhem!

We have just come out the other side of 4 days of complete chaos as regards the weather. Northland does get wet and we have a lot of flooding, but usually the severest of weather is over in a day, so it's not a long term thing. But this time we had around 4 days of the worst weather we have ever had in the 10 years we've lived here. In the two main days of rain almost half a metre fell - yep - over our wee area we had 450mm of rain. This is off the scale! The was paired with hurricane force gusts of wind. Lloyd seriously thought all the windows in our wee cottage were going to blow in at one point.

This is what we've just been through. If you can see the outline of NZ's north island we are in the reddest bit with the lines almost touching!


Now that it's over and we have wandered around it's amazing how little damage we've suffered. There are a few trees down and absolutely everything is waterlogged. The driveway down to The Acorn is trashed, there's mud everywhere, and we had no power for all of 6 hours, but it's tiny in comparison to what others are going through. Some were without power for 3 days, lots have been evacuated from their homes because of flooding. Roads have literally disappeared because of landslips. State Highway 1, pretty much our only way south had large areas of it underwater. It will be ages until it's repaired.

The weather is an amazing thing.

During the storm - this was how we roll during a power cut! If the electricity does go off we have no water either as it's all done by a pump.

Lloyd cooking dinner with a headtorch on! Over our wood range.


Our ponytail palm lost his head!

Trees down all over the place!



 I took these yesterday, once the rain had stopped,  on our drive from home into Kerikeri. It was early morning and the mist was just burning off, it turned into a beautiful day. ( there is a difference between iphone pics and good camera pics!!)



All the reflections are in flood water. There are farms underneath.



We had to drive through this to get into town, but we had the trusty old jeep.


We saw the farmer inspecting this, and he waved and smiled - still smiling!







Now, I didn't take the following photos and it's proving impossible for me to find who did to credit them, but here are some photos of what it looks like. It should also be pointed out that these roads aren't back roads - this is State Highway 1! Our main road to basically anywhere!








The emergency services, electricity linesmen/women, ordinary folk...pretty much everyone has been amazing. Let the clean up begin!

10 comments:

  1. How amazing that people are driving through all that water. After the photo of your Hy 1, it must be taking a risk to trust that there is a solid and safe road under all that flooded area.

    Glad you are fine. I have to admit that your topless palm made me giggle.

    Your own photographs are an extraordinary, beautiful and stunning Rorschach of weather. Your eye for images and composition is divine.

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    1. either amazing or very foolhardy. Not surprisingly there isn't solid road under a lot of places and we've had some horrendous slips now. SH1 north is closed again, possibly for a week now. Poor road workers are really having a rough time of it. And thank you - but really when the landscape is as beautiful as it was you can't go wrong xxx

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  2. Definitely time for some sunshine and a chance for things to dry out up there. Glad you got through it all without too much trouble. My husband has working up in Kerikeri for the last two months, hopefully this is his last week. As long as he can get home next weekend I shall be happy. He has loved the far north even with the BIG WET. Your photos are truely beautiful Laura.

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    1. Sunny today! :) Tell your hubby he should pop in and say hi to us!!

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  3. Good grief that's a lot of water. Will it go down quickly or linger for ages? We had bad flooding last winter in parts of England that took months to go so I hope yours will be a lot quicker.

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    1. it mostly goes away again fairly quickly. The bad thing about this time is that there is so much if we get another heavy rainfall there's nowhere for the new rain to go so it'll flood again instantly.

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  4. Oh, how dreadful! I am so glad you and Lloyd are safe and that the damage to your property wasn't total. Evan still, so much work to do to get back to where you were, I am sure. I cannot really even imagine that much rain. The power of water is amazing--and terrible, sometimes. That is more rain that we get in an entire year, and a wet year at that. Good luck to everyone working to pull things back together. Take care!

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    1. the rain was unbelievable, really. It just didn't stop! The roadworkers have been absolutely spectacular, working round the clock to get the roads open again.

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  5. Glad to hear you're fine and that the devestation isn't as bad as you suspected. But that sure is a lot of water. When nature show it's strength we sure are small. Here on the other side of the world (Swweden) we usually don't get storms of your magnitude but the ones we get are scary enough and just like you we live on a farm and when electricity goes it makes life a bit more difficult (especially waterwise).

    Take care and I hope the water will dry up as soon as possible.

    Charlie
    xx

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    1. Hi Charlie! We had another weekend of it this weekend - but it only really lasted a day. Sadly the ground was so waterloggged another areas of the main highway north just disappeared! At least this time peoples houses were ok. Sun is shining today and it's lovely!

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I love it when you leave me comments, it lets me know there are folk out there reading my ramblings! Thank you, I appreciate them loads and loads
Laura x