Tue, 01 Jun 2010 2:57p.m.
By Josh Heslop
After a week of heavy rain, snow and strong winds; some may say it’s a big, fat reminder that Mother Nature does what she wants, when she wants and she doesn’t care who’s in her way. Snap yo’ fingers coz this girl’s on a mission!
Parts of Otago, Canterbury and Hawke’s Bay were flooded after six days of back-to-back rain, while emergency services attended slips and blown-off roofs elsewhere. At this stage it’s still not known how much the clean up from the Otago floods will cost.
I’ve never seen so many severe weather warnings over such an extended time. It wasn’t just the severity of the weather that caused all the problems; it was the relentless nature of it. Quite often the media is guilty of calling a storm a “weather bomb”. This wasn’t technically a weather bomb. It was more like one of those annoying party candles no one can blow out!
The bad weather came from a group of low pressure systems moving onto the country at the same time. Wednesday night saw one low centre moving north towards Auckland and Waikato, with another heading south towards Canterbury. It was a complete, simultaneous assault on the country.
Later in the week, heavy downpours dumped more than half the usual monthly rainfall in Hawke’s Bay in just a matter of hours. The deluge saw 70mm fall over six hours on Saturday. The monthly average is about 100mm.
As I look out the window now, I can see the sky over Auckland clouding over. Yip, more heavy rain is on the way folks. This time the northern half of the North Island is in the firing line as yet another low approaches from the Tasman. The tally is now up to five of these babies in just over a week.
Some may say this is just winter. Yes it is. But the storm at the end of May is bound to be one of the biggest weather events of the year.
Welcome to June and the real start of winter. You might just want to keep your anorak (and maybe your canoe) handy.