Under the weather

The wind began to switch, the house to pitch, and while we haven’t been flown over the rainbow yet, it’s pretty wild. This video is of a calm break. It blew some plastic deck chairs the length of the deck (runs along the whole back of the house). My tomatoes are taking a hammering, but it’s too wild to inspect up close. Nothing I can do, anyway. The house is whistling and moaning with every gust. The wind is supposed to switch directions today as the tropical depression moves south. On the other hand, the rain has given us a good and much-needed soaking, but no flooding, so that’s good. #firstbigstormof2018 #auckland #newzealand

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Jan 4, 2018 at 1:25pm PST

Our first big storm of 2018 (the link was updated during the day) was more or less as promised. Some parts of the country, especially coastal areas, were hit hard, while inland areas faired much better. Mostly as promised.

Things were mostly pretty sedate at our house. I shot the video above this morning, during a relative lull in the windy conditions.

The day the storm was due to arrive on Thursday, but what we got was mostly gentle, if somewhat steady, rain. The strong winds, which were supposed to arrive by around 5pm, didn’t actually show up until much later in the night. By morning, the winds were quite strong, but they started to fade by late morning/midday today.

There was rain overnight, but not the torrential rain that had been predicted—sometimes there was little to none. This afternoon and into this evening, the wind mostly faded, but it picked up again this evening. The rain this afternoon was sometimes heavier, but still nothing like what was predicted.

The winds may have damaged my tomoatoes (I haven’t been out to look yet), but the mostly gentle, and not too heavy when it wasn’t, rain will have really helped the gardens and our lawns, which were looking pretty brown. I read somewhere that we got more rain in Auckland overnight than we got in November and December combined. That sounds impressive until you find out we’re talking about around 41mm (around 1.61 inches). Clearly we had a very dry two months. That’s why the rain we got is so welcome.

The flooding from the storm hasn’t been because of rain as much as from the strong winds and king tides, which meant there was a lot more water for those winds to push around, and they did. Watching the reports on the news and looking at various photos, I couldn’t help think that this was kind of dress rehearsal for what will be common as climate change makes sea levels rise and storms much worse. But, then, New Zealand already knows that; too bad one of the countries that's a major causes of climate change is absent in the fight for the earth.

While all this has been gong on, I’ve also not been feeling well—sort of flu-y and very tired. I still worked on my office project, but doing only what I felt up to doing, and that wasn’t much. It wasn’t a good couple days for working on projects; I’ve been “under the weather” in every sense.

The centre of the storm will have moved quite a way south by tomorrow, but they’re still predicting rain for us. That’s okay, we can still use more rain. Regardless of what the weather does, though. I hope I feel better tomorrow. There are tomatoes to inspect.