Heavy rain and gale force winds brought much of Wellington to a standstill today. One of the main casualties was the Wairarapa Train which was derailed after hitting a landslip just south of Maymourn where MT gets the train from. Fortunantely no one was injured in the accident but it’s brought the train line to a standstill until they can move the train, clear the slip and repair the rails.
MT wasn’t on the train himself which is good news but it didn’t make it any easier for the journey home which as you can imagine the train services were pretty disrupted. Once again I count our lucky stars as it was four years ago that I was on the underground train behind the one that was blown up by terrorists in London between Aldgate and Liverpool Street.
There was chaos on the roads too as landslips fell onto the main carriages and caused accidents and road closures. I was driving back from Wellington hardly being able to see beyond the end of the bonnet of the car. Needless to say I was driving very slowly but you won’t be surprised to know that there were the usual maniacs who were overtaking at high speed.
By the time I did make it home I found the chickens roosting as high as they could away from the water flowing under their chicken house. Whilst our new drains save them from a worse fate the rain has been so heavy small streams have started all over our land. It wasn’t pleasant sloshing around in the water and mud trying to make sure that they were all present and correct. What was most amazing is the pesky feral chickens who sleep in the gorse tree were even more stupid than I thought. It was teeming down with rain and there were two perfectly good hen houses for them to choose from but no they were perched in the trees with their heads down with water dripping off their feathers. At least they are waterproof!
The rain we have had certainly comes close to the terrible weather we had around this time last year although the winds weren’t quite as strong. Checking out the rain gauge it seems we had 99.5mm of rain, the wettest day this year. So far this year we’ve had over a metre of rain (1101.5 mm to be precise!). That’s a lot of rain but it still only about half of what we normally get in a year so just think of all that wet days I’ve got to look forward to.
Luckily the weather forecast is looking better for the weekend and early in the week. That’s just as well as I’m getting some more ground works done. We’re having a new path excavated so that we can drive the mower down to the lower area of the garden without putting life and limb at risk trying to drive it back up the hill.
This is also the first step, or rather path, to building the new kitchen garden. There’ll be some hard core going down on that path before the bassets are let loose otherwise there will be more than the usual level of muddy paws.
One of the biggest drawbacks of weather like we’ve had when you live in Wellington is that if you’re in town there is no point thinking about using an umbrella. The winds are simply too strong. It is possible to get around most of the CBD under cover as they have awnings outside most of the shops. You are however stuffed if you want to cross the road or get to a part of town where there is no cover.
I popped into town today after leading a Catapult gig in Lower Hutt and had to cross the main road to the waterfront. It’s four lanes of traffic and whilst there was a shelter at the crossing point crossing the road left me arriving for my meeting with me looking like a drowned rat. I didn’t feel too bad about it though as I was surrounded by other drowned rats and the coffee shop waitresses were very helpfully passing out paper towels for people to dry themselves off.
I’m hopeful that the winds haven’t done too much damage on our usual walks. But it will have to wait for the weekend for us to find out.