Around midday on Tuesday, I got a news alerts that primary schools in West Auckland were being evacuated due to flooding, and another news alert told me that torrential rain led to multiple crashes on Auckland’s motorway (link is to live reporting on the storm). Later, it turned out that a 15-year-old boy died in a caving accident in Northland (why, exactly, they were taken on a caving expedition when severe wether was forecast has not yet been determined.
There was more rain again yesterday, and then the thunderstorms began. MetServce reported that there were more than 12,000 lightening strikes between 8am yesterday and 8am this morning. There amore that 14,000 lightening strikes altogether, plus heavy rain and hail, just to add to all the fun.
Yesterday afternoon, in between heavy downpours, I could hear the strong winds assaulting my roof. I was watching TV and heard a strong gust, then thought, “hang on a minute”, and muted the TV to make sure: It was thunder. That continued from time to time throughout the evening, and even this morning. I’ve said in the past that thunderstorms aren’t nearly as common here as they were in my native Northeastern Illinois, but I’ve certainly never heard thunder for hours on end, or for two days in a row.
There was one thing I thought was particularly odd about the thunder: It didn’t seem very close to us. I never saw any lightning flashes, nor were the booms very loud. In fact, if there was any thunder overnight, it wasn’t loud enough to wake me.
Come to think of it, the weather for the whole year so far has been particularly odd. We’ve had a lot of rain causing a lot of flooding in various parts of the country, and even when it’s not been actually raining, it’s been overcast, often heavily so. Frankly, it’s depressing AF not seeing much sunshine for weeks on end, and obviously worse when the clouds are thick and make the days dark and dreary. Rain for hours on end only makes that worse still.
On the other hand, there hasn’t been any flooding in the area where my house is: Those raingardens work really, really well at controlling stormwater, and areas that have them don’t have the kinds of flooding problems that areas with similar topography, but no raingardens, can get. The only reason I hate the one on my property is that it’s an ugly cattle concrete trough that I have to maintain at my expense/effort. They’re actually a great thing as a concept, though.
The only real (and very, very minor) issue this horrible weather has caused for me lately is that it’s made it far too wet to mow the lawns, and they need it already. That’s because the storm system that’s been over NZ for the past couple weeks (the “atmospheric river”) brought not just a lot of rain, it also carried warm, moist tropical air, creating ideal conditions for lawns (and weeds…) to grow.
This time of year—which is the equivalent of November in the Northern Hemisphere—we’d expect temperatures to be in the mid upper teens (low to mid 60s F), but at one point last week it was 23 at my house (73.4 F). So, instead of being able to go a couple weeks between mows like in a normal autumn, my lawns looked ready for one after only a week. They’re still waiting, though the temperatures have now cooled.
This underscores the one problem with battery-powered lawnmowers like mine: They don’t cope well with thick or wet lawns. Petrol-powered mowers often (usually, even) have a more powerful motor, but even if they don’t, they don’t usually run out of fuel if the grass is thick and gluggy from rain. Mowing a wet lawn with a battery-powered mower can quickly drain the batteries.
When I mowed my lawns two weeks ago, I needed both batteries to finish because even after two consecutive days with no rain, the lawns were very wet at the ground level: I could hear the motor slowing when there was a particularly thick patch of lawn. That can happen with petrol mowers, of course, but they have more energy, and possibly more power, than mine does. However, there’s more to it than just battery capacity.
When I hear my mower’s motor slow, I slow down, too, in order to prevent the mower from stalling. If I don’t reduce the strain on the battery, it will cause the battery’s temperature to rise, and that could trigger the automatic safety feature to shut the mower off, preventing it from restarting until the battery cools down, something that’s happened to me a couple times. This is a necessary—and very welcome—thing that keeps the battery from overheating and exploding into flames, as lithium batteries are notorious for doing. Not surprisingly, I think that safety feature is a very excellent thing.
I know how to maximise the battery power when I mow. I also know that periods of heavy rain will prevent me from mowing, and I also know that I just have to accept that reality and be patient. Patience is something I struggle with even on bright, beautiful, sunny days; this rain-delayed mowing thing is slowly teaching me something I clearly need to learn.
But I’m so very fortunate to be living in house that’s not vulnerable to flooding, because climate change is bringing us more severe storms, more often. While New Zealand’s current run of terrible weather won’t continue forever, there will be more in the future. We all need to learn to adapt. And to be patient.
If the weather really does fine up tomorrow, I hope to mow my lawns on Saturday—weather permitting.
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