Weather

[arthwollipot]

It's been raining pretty steadily here since yesterday afternoon. The nice kind of rain, not the sudden torrents that cause flash flooding.

[Admin]

Fuck me, this has gone from the absurd to the utterly unbelievable.

With a massive 69 houses destroyed, half a dozen roads still shut, and two schools that have been impacted by flooding, the government has decided to shut all Auckland schools for the entire week.

There isn't a puddle within 15 km of our place, but the schools are closed.

I shudder to think what's going to happen when an actual disaster hits.

[arthwollipot]

Damn, dude, flooding really sucks. What lots of people tend to forget is that water is heavy. It will absolutely wash your car downstream if you try to cross flood waters. People tend not to take that into account, which is why even a small amount of flooding can be so devastating.

[Di Wundrin]

...snip ...

Re that overdue volcanic action thing.. That would do it for me. I'd be outa there tomorrow!

There's a beautiful thing for when it does happen - the new volcano will be in a rich area. The poor fuckers all live too far from the city.

Where we are is fine - we live on the very geologically sound granite rise 20 km from the edge of the volcanic field.

Nup. 20km wouldn't do it for me, The Tasman is about the correct safe distance.


" Going to ground" seems to have become the default strategy of the NZ Government in latter years.
Here too for that matter.

Lockitdown, shutidown, shutitup, and pretend everything's under control. we know what were doing. and it's all for your own good whether you like or not. Saves them getting of their arses, or getting wet, turning up to really plan anything.

Be thankful theres not a lot of damage in your area as if Oz is any measuring stick (and we've a bit of practice at disaster recovery lately) it will be a few years before Auckland looks tidy again.

Middling sized town Lismore had about it's 170th recorded flood about a year ago and they're still only at the arguing about whether to move the whole shebang off the flood plain or just rebuild and hope to be finished before the next big one rolls through.

They may as well just rebuild it uphill as it's not going to cost more than rebuilding it where it is every few years.

The media play it as something new but I remember we used to stay with people there when I only around 5 or 6 (around 1950) and their house was built on 12ft poles. It hovered above the ground so high i got a saw neck looking up at it. The stairs were a workout for a little kid they must have been further apart than most?.. hated those stairs. Inside the house was just the frame studs and the outside weatherboard nailed onto it. No internal 'dry wall' just marine ply between rooms. No carpet or lino, bare as a backside for furniture too. A sofa and some kitchen chairs, the beds and a high 'dresser' in the kitchen.

It was a 'flood plain house'. They lived there between floods. They had block and tackle rigged in the reinforced roof to haul up the beds and sofa above high water. And left the doors open so the water didn't back up when it came through. The wooden walls and floors dried out okay, no plaster to replace, just camp somewhere till the sun did it's job, then moved back in.

There was a watermark around all the bare wood frames that showed how high the water had come and it was up at about picture rail level.
A mere couple of feet under the roof where all their belongings were.

12ft posts plus 10ft ceiling and waterline 2 feet under that? That's a fair sized flood. 20ft above ground level. Noooo, floods aren't new in Lismore.

They lived there for decades, they sure knew how to build houses back then. I think of that house when I see those shows from the bayou regions they build like that in the Southern States too. presumably for the same reason?

Trouble now is that people won't live in a bare bones house, they want the dry wall and fancy drapes and tons of furniture then sulk when it all has to be thrown out. That's why it's getting more expensive, it's not that they're getting more floods.

But it's a damned good reason to just move the whole bloody town!

[Admin]

Damn, dude, flooding really sucks. What lots of people tend to forget is that water is heavy. It will absolutely wash your car downstream if you try to cross flood waters. People tend not to take that into account, which is why even a small amount of flooding can be so devastating.

There's a motorway underpass in the city that floods with even a fairly minor amount of rain.

An office I worked in many years ago overlooked it. We used to lay bets on how many people on any given day would drive into what looked like a shallow puddle only to find it's 6 feet deep. They put warning light up but it didn't stop anyone.

[Admin]

Nup. 20km wouldn't do it for me, The Tasman is about the correct safe distance.

As volcanoes go, these ones are babies, so 20 km is plenty.

Be thankful theres not a lot of damage in your area as if Oz is any measuring stick (and we've a bit of practice at disaster recovery lately) it will be a few years before Auckland looks tidy again.

Nah, you'd drive around tomorrow and not even know unless you know where to look.

The area affected is well under 0.5% of the city. There's been a few slips, but the actual flooding was confined to a few streets in one area.

[grayman]

Weekend temperature is forecast to be around 13°f to 16°f.

Map of what the wind-chill factor will make it feel like:

[Di Wundrin]

Nup. 20km wouldn't do it for me, The Tasman is about the correct safe distance.

As volcanoes go, these ones are babies, so 20 km is plenty.

Be thankful theres not a lot of damage in your area as if Oz is any measuring stick (and we've a bit of practice at disaster recovery lately) it will be a few years before Auckland looks tidy again.

Nah, you'd drive around tomorrow and not even know unless you know where to look.

The area affected is well under 0.5% of the city. There's been a few slips, but the actual flooding was confined to a few streets in one area.

Seriously?? The way we're hearing it half the population of Auckland is afloat! bloody media hype. again.

[arthwollipot]

I was chatting online one day with a friend who lived in a town in northern Canada that really only existed because of a nickel mine. He said one day that it was -42 degrees there. I asked "Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?" He replied "It doesn't matter!"

[Admin]

Weekend temperature is forecast to be around 13°f to 16°f.

Map of what the wind-chill factor will make it feel like:

All yours - I don't want any part of that. Blast freezers that can freeze a sheep carcass solid in five minutes operate at those temps.