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!

Cyclone Lusi

I love a good storm. I don't want it to hurt anyone or cause damage, but I love listening to the wind and rain, love the wildness of it all. So when we were told that Cyclone Lusi was heading our way I took all the usual precautions - went all round the place making sure nothing could blow away, moving various bits of outside and deck furniture. Stocking up on water in case of a power cut etc. Then waited... and waited... and waited!

I know! New Zealand is a tiny country, and where we live is very narrow so it's difficult for the forecasters to really be sure of exactly what will happen, but at our place all we had were some gusty winds and rain. Not even torrential rain.

But as you can see, it was expected to be huge! We are right near the top of the North Island at the bottom of the very narrow bit ( more or less!)

So, against all warnings, I went off in the jeep with my trusty camera and searched out anything I could find that was storm related! I drove over to the coast, to Paihia, and oh wow, poor old Paihia was getting the brunt of it all. It was high tide and the sea was going crazy.

This is the road along the front. Usually Paihia is lovely and calm, I swim here a lot. There is no sea wall or anything like that, cos there really hasn't been a need for one!
However it seems like half the beach was washed onto the road. It was worse further along.

The usual flat waters round the beach, the boat area and the beach cafe.

More beach on the road further along the front. There were numerous fire engines here pumping out water from various places.

This wee dinghy broke its mooring right in front of me. It started bobbing along in the sea.

Very difficult to show the scale of these waves, but take my word for it, they were huge!

As far as I know, this yacht survived! It was well tied on!

And today it's al over. Rain has stopped and the sun is trying to come out.

Usually Paihia looks like this..

Floods!

It's still raining, and we're back from our drive. There was an awful lot of flooding along the way. There is a town not too far away from us called Kaeo and it always floods. I really don't know how the poor people that live there cope with it. Some have built their houses up on stilts now, but I think this would be impossible in the main street. Anyway, we couldn't actually get into Kaeo as the road was totally flooded. We just got to the outskirts.

I think the people in this photo must  live in the house on the left - they appear to be completely flooded in. The only good thing is that the waters do subside very quickly, but sadly there's a lot more rain forecast.

This is normally a cow paddock

Kaeo - pretty much underwater , the far left of this picture - to the side of the 2 white buildings - is the main road into town. It curves round and behind. It's all water.

So far we still have power and it's certainly not cold. We're also fairly high up so the real flooding doesn't really affect us at all, there are three different routes we can take into town so if we can't get through one way we can always get through another way. The only issue for us really is one of the bridges north on the way to work for Lloyd. If it's flooded then he can't get to work.

My chicks seem fine, mum is doing a good job of keeping them warm. There are 5 doing really well and one very tiny sickly one that I fear won't survive long. Time will tell.

life in the sub-tropics..

We are right in the middle of this! See the orange blob well we're in the left side of it. We've had 160mm of rain since yesterday. That's a huge amount.
I had 5 wee chicks hatch so I've been checking on them constantly - they seem to be warm and snug under mum in their cosy dry house. I hope the roof doesn't blow off.

We're actually going to venture out to see if there's any flooding around the place. It's only a matter of time till the power goes off so we may as well do something!
Keep dry folks
xx

Bad weather coming our way

So, it's officially autumn and to celebrate this fact one massive storm is heading our way.
It's supposed to arrive this evening, but thankfully it's moving pretty quickly and will be over by tomorrow.
Here's what it looks like!

Photo from metvuw

We should get off slightly more lightly than a lot of people, because if you look at the map we're near that thin part at the top of the north island. We'll still be taking some precautions though, like moving tractors, jeeps etc into garage areas. The barn is so full of hay that the poor tractor will stick out a wee bit! Also getting in a large supply of popcorn for the film watching that we'll have to do on Saturday.

Good luck everyone that's in the firing line.

Extreme Weather

Today it's 20 degrees, hot, sunny, blue skies. Rather stunning winter's day really. Yesterday was warm, wet, wetter and wettest! Paddocks turned into rivers, dips in paddocks turned into swimming pools. We've had torrential rain before, we live in a sub  tropical area, so we're used to it. However, this tree trunk had been in the same spot for 6 years ( that we know of.) Last night it moved... a lot!

 All of this was a river.

All the grass that you can see in the photo, with the exception of the bit on the far right, was totally under water, a raging torrent!

This trunk is about 10m long and is about 1m wide, so it's not small.

 You can see how deep the water got - the grass and muck all over the fence was the 'high tide'

I had a dream last night...

that all my tomatoes got broken down to just tiny stalks and that my bean pyramid looked fine, but then I realised that the wind had lifted it and it was in another veggie bed from where it was planted so it would die. In my dream I was so upset. So when I woke up I was scared to look out the window! After the edge of the cyclone hit (It still remains a category 2) I was sure the place would be trashed.

However, this morning has dawned dry with blue skies. It's still a bit breezy, but it's almost unbelievable to think that yesterday we were being hit by a cyclone. Further east from us got hit worse as Wilma was tracking down the coast - so our friends at the beach had 300mm of rain, we had 120mm ish. Their driveway has, quite literally, been washed away, which is terrible. And a lot of people were evacuated last night, so we got off very lightly.

I got up at 7 this morning and walked around checking on the animals, the veggies and the garden. Still got to look round the farm.

But the good news ~ everything is fine.

The beans hadn't been lifted right out by the wind, and my tomatoes were still firmly in place, looking non the worse for being hit by 150km winds. ( Tomato cages rock!)

The silly chooks, who went to roost up their tree, even though I had shut them in their lovely dry house, weren't even wet this morning and all ate a hearty breakfast.

I'm very glad it's over though.

Thanks to everyone who was wishing us well, yesterday, you're all lovely.

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

This is coming right at us!

Oh oh. The red dot is roughly us. So tropical cyclone on the way, then.

And this is what the seas are going to be like. Now, we're not near the coast, but I don't think I've ever seen a map as bad as this for swells since we've lived here. The darkest colour means 8m swells.

It's eerily calm just now, not a breath of wind and just light cloud, but we've been warned that this is on it's way for about 5 days now.

I've spent the morning staking things up in the veggie garden - dunno how much good it'll do, I know they're just vegetables but I'll be so sad if it gets trashed.

Off to buy some more bungy thingies to tie stuff down - we went through all the ones we had last night. I suppose it's best to prepare for the worst, then it might not happen. One good thing about this storm is it's supposed to pass very quickly and hopefully it'll be downgraded as well.

You can read more about it here HERE ( which is also where I got the photographs from)

Think I've gone off the name Wilma.

I'm joining in with Rhonda's On My Mind, today. Because it sure is!

130ml of rain today...a sign of things to come this winter...I certainly hope not!








The New Zealand Herald printed this one!!! ( thanks to Weatherwatch)

We made it!
Last night was absolutely horrible though. At about midnight the wind got up again, the eye had passed. All night we were buffeted by gales ( 175km/h) lucky Lloyd slept through it, my imagination didn't let me, I kept thinking of all the terrible things that could happen and had to keep looking out the window ( what I was expecting to see in the pitch dark I have no idea!) Eventually with daylight I looked out and everything seemed fine. At 7am the wind dropped and I fell asleep.

At 11 we went for a walk around and miraculously there has been no more damage, other than the tree from yesterday, we have one tree that has blown squint, and my sweetpea trellis - that's it! So, so lucky. Lloyd reckons it's because the weather has been so terrible up here and we've had some really high winds over the last year, everything that could blow down or was weak is already down.
All the animals are fine, the chickens have been given their freedom for the day and the donks are wet and muddy but happy to see us! In fact we're all a bit wet and muddy, have been for weeks now, so nothing new there!
Coos good too.

It's still raining, but I don't care! The wind has gone whooo hooo!

Better get ready for the next one - supposedly there's another one coming in by the end of the week. Maybe it'll blow off course!

Category 3 tropical cyclone!! wow.

video is about 10am this morning


.

about 2 hours later, a LOT more water!



never normally any water here!


We're right in the middle of it now. This morning 200km/h winds were recorded in the Bay of Islands.
It's all a bit hairy!
So far we've lost one huge pine tree, but it was due to come down anyway and it fell in such a way that no damage was caused. There are loads of branches down all over the place, but so far both houses are fine and all the animals are ok too. We've had to go out and stake a couple of our newer trees as they were looking dangerously like being blown over.

We had no electricity for about 5 hours so we went into Kerikeri to get some water as no power, no pump, no water even though it's torrential rain outside! The drive home was wet! Bulls Gorge is now closed, we were some of the last cars to get through. Our rivers are very high, the one nearest our house has completely burst it's banks but is nowhere near to reaching the house. The one down at mum and dad's is so high, but would never reach!

The Stone Store bridge is mad!
The wind is just getting up again so I assume the eye has past us, they're forecasting that this afternoon and night are going to be even more windy.