Admin wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:35 pm
Di, you better get some incontinence knickers on, because you might well shit yourself laughing at this one, and it pretty much sums up the Great Auckland Flood.
Our headline story this morning is the sad tale of a family whose house was wasted in the flood:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/131109 ... -in-deluge
Just after they'd spent 35 grand on flood repairs!
And that wasn't even the only flood in the past year.
If you live on land prone to flooding, you should probably expect flooding.
Yes, we've had a couple of unfortunate deaths, and most of the real damage has been done by land giving way as a result of the massive rainfall, but it all part of the cycle Auckland is subject to. It's how erosion works, and if you build a house on or near a steep slope in NZ, you can bet your last dollar that at some stage, it will fall down.
The really funny part is the rain didn't coincide with either a very high tide, a storm surge, or strong north-east winds. Sooner or later, those three will combine with tropical rainfall, and if you ever wanted a place utterly at the mercy of a decent storm surge, it's Auckland. The floods last week will look like puddles when the tide's backing the water up and flooding in from the sea as well.
A normal spring tide sees our two major traffic routes sitting a whole six inches above high water. Total money spent in Auckland on flood prevention: $0.
Yep, that sounds like Lismore, and a few other towns full of 'Pollyanna' home and business owners.
But the people who rebuild houses on 'fire ridges' take the the medals.
This town has a bit of a 'slippage' action now and then too. There's an odd patch of geology that I should read up on but haven't. It's soil isn't like that around the region. Hilly as hell with loose conglomerate looking soil doesn't do 'cuttings' very well and the Council are forever closing the roads while they 'rewrap' the dodgiest bits with heavy wire mesh and cross their fingers. of course it slips down and pressures the wire out every yer or three so they just do it over again.
It would be easier to just grade back more of a slope but people have built million buck (almost) mansions on top for the views. Doh!
Bit of excitement here yesterday after noon. Bewdiful day, sunshine nice and hot, cicadas screaming, birds singing me in the middle of typing a rant about something and KABOOOM! Huge flash of light and ear splitting noise nearly knocked me sideways. Faaaaaaaarout.
It was a bolt from the blue. Absolutely no warning of a storm whatever. Sun was still out for another minute or so.
Didn't knock the power out but had reconnect the wi-fi and had a look at the weather radar it was the tiniest little storm I've ever see. Barely as bi as the town! It only had another 2 strikes in it and a few buckets of rain and it tootled out to sea and the sun ws out again in 5 minutes flat.
Had to chuckle at the sound of just about everyone in the 'village' out discussing what they were doing when the big strike happaned though.
Lucky it didn't stop a few old hearts.
Last night on the News there was another little storm that wreaked havoc on Pt Maquarie just down the coast. Found some footage of that and it's hard to believe such a little storm could be so fierce. 'Microburst'?? something like that it said. ...of course theres a mention of the town being 'destroyed' which is bullshit. Bit of cleanup but it's a big town and far from 'destroyed'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emZvhkOf2Xo
