9.8 inches of rain in 24 hours

Welcome to this special post. I am inserting this one into the series I've been doing of the sights across the South Island of New Zealand because I want to show it to you all while it is still current. Our local news is full of stories of the flooding that took many areas of Auckland by surprise.  I'll get back to my South Island series next week.

We were very fortunate here at our village.  We are situated well above the Opanuku Stream and although the pictures I'll show you here are startling, our village, for the most part, stayed dry.  

I took this first picture a few days ago.  It was the day before the rain started.  I took it to document a higher than normal high tide.

I was standing on the bridge over the Opanuku Stream for this picture. The bridge is about 100 meters from the gate of our retirement village. 

The white building on the top left is our local Pack N Save Supermarket. Notice also the pipe that runs across the stream. That is unfortunately very ugly. It will serve one function though in my next pictures. It will show how high the water was during the storm. 

When the rain started, it started hard.  Notice that there seems to be a minor geyser to the right of the gate controls at the entrance to the village.  The water pressure in the storm water pipes has blown the manhole cover off.   

This is a close up of that area. It also appear that the curbing is under water.  

The rain continued pretty much all day.  It'd take a breather now and then, possibly trying to lull us into believing that it was over, but would then redouble it's efforts.  

At about 7 p.m., Jeanne wondered what the Stream might look like.  I was curious as well.  I donned my raincoat and grabbed my big umbrella as well, so that I could keep my camera dry while I took pictures.  

This was the scene on the bridge.  My umbrella shows at the top of some of these next pictures.  It was not raining very hard at this time, but I don't take chances with my camera. 

You might want to scroll back up for just a moment before you go on.  Look again at what the Opanuku normally looks like. The next photo is startling.  

Look how close to the supermarket the water level is.  And note that the pipe across the stream is gone, completely submerged by the water.  I was slightly uncomfortable watching this. A still picture does not show the speed of the water passing under me.  I should have taken a video I suppose, but I was hurrying to get as many pictures as I could before the rain and winds kicked in again in earnest.  

The little red roof you see on the right is the top of the historic sawmill waterwheel reconstruction.  The next picture shows you what that looks like when the water level in the Opanuku is at its normal low levels.  

 

I took this picture showing the railing of the bridge and facing the drive down to the underground parking for the supermarket. The water is very close to the top of the bridge. 

In this next picture, I have crossed the bridge and am facing the parking lot of the West Wave swimming pools.  West Wave is to the right.  

I would normally go down the three steps you see, turn left, and follow the boardwalk down under the bridge and along the shore of the Stream.  It's very scenic. Today, the water level is almost ready to start spreading into the parking lot.  

After getting these shots of the stream by the bridge, I worried how our vegetable gardens were doing.  Jeanne, and many others, work daily to provide veggies, and flowers, to the residents of our village.  It would be a shame if our gardens were impacted.  

I therefore came up to a vantage point above the gardens and saw that all was well.  

In this shot, you can see that the water level, and this is at the height of the flood, is still well below the gardens.  

I took the following pictures about 12 hours after those I've just shared.  The storm is over. The ugly pipe has survived.  So has the waterwheel house.  

When I returned to the West Wave parking lot, I was pleased to see that the boardwalk seemed to still be okay, although I don't intend to walk on the lower portions until after they are checked out.  They may have been undermined by the currents.  

This bench is along the parking lot at West Wave. I'm looking toward the Stream here, and look, there is debris on the bench. Unbelievable.  

The clean up crews have their work cut out for them.

I walked over to Pack N Save and saw this guy pumping out the last of the water from the parking lot under the store.  

The news around Auckland after the storm shows the extensive damage that was done in some areas.  The crews are already on the job.  

We've talked to Allie and learned that when she noticed that the storm drain near her house was getting blocked up with debris and the water around it was backing up, she went out in the storm and cleared the grate, allowing the water to flow again. I think that many people probably did their share to help during the emergency.  

Next week, as I said at the beginning of this post, I hope to return to documenting our South Island tour.  See you then.   -djf