Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 154
Actively
supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
This is our third tropical storm in a row, something we’ve
been expecting with this endless summer now into a fifth month. Gita caused
widespread damage to Tonga, then
circled down through the Tasman Sea to line up the centre of the country.
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| The calm before the storm - Monday evening mallards |
Fortunately we were only sideswiped here at Raumati Beach with
Gita dropping a little lower south
than expected while beginning to break up.
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| Running for it. Wetland pukeko with youngster |
This still provided an unusual
weather pattern from Monday night which we monitored carefully as the first rains began. It was
drizzly overnight but then set in early Tuesday morning so that around 8am we
were getting 10mm an hour and expecting severe flooding with the local council advertising
sandbags for flood areas.
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| Not so lucky further south - Slips on the Takaka hill in Nelson - South Island |
But then it eased around 10.30am after dropping 30mm and while the
Wharemauku rose, it didn’t get much over half full. For 24 hours though, to 6.30
last night there was an eerie dead calm. But then the winds really picked up and
there was further rain through the night which took our total up to 50mm. We were ok here
however, though it blew our garden gate down into the drive; but then little
damage as we walked around the district this morning. A lot of autumn fruit had
fallen early (Thankyou for the bag of pears scattered from a tree in a local lane!!).
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| Seas close the highway south of Paekakariri |
The most spectacular event has been the closure of the
Expressway after a slip closed the main road further into Wellington. It was
like a scene out of The Walking Dead.
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| Deserted M2PP expressway - 8am Wednesday morning |
But ah what bliss! No vehicle stream as
we walked the wetland this morning around 8 when it should have been at its
noisy peak.
More serious questions are raised by all this regarding
climate change. This is certainly the hottest, longest and lately, most turbulent
summer we have experienced, and it’s not over yet. Fruit is ripening very
early. Pears are a month ahead while we were out picking blackberries in early
January. They usually come on in early February. And then there are the fungi.
The media have been running stories on rural areas picking wild mushrooms and
these don’t usually appear until late March or April. We too, have been
noticing these large fungi blossoming around our wetland areas, presumably as a
result of these warm humid weeks.
We will be watching our coming winter closely to see if theres a
flow on from it all.
Track we were listening to while posting this. We are back
to Dylan as he set out his guide to the aging, gloomy pessimism that steered the soundtrack to Wonder Boys Things Have Changed
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
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