'I'm always looking for the Hows and the Whys and the Whats,' said Muskrat, 'That is why I speak as I do. You've heard of Muskrat's Much-in-Little, of course?'
'No,' said the child. 'What is it?'
- The Mouse and his Child. Russell Hoban.

Go here to find out more.

Tuesday 12 May 2009

Tornadoes, Hail and the Roof Caves in!

Oblivious to all but the inconvenience of heavy rain at lunchtime, I worked hard in my ceramics class yesterday.  
But elsewhere in the Bay of Plenty there was some unusually fierce weather.  The weight of 15 cm of hail broke through the roof of our local mall in five places and everyone had to be evacuated, and there were at least three little tornadoes that did a bit of damage to roofs further up the coast.

This is what our local beach usually looks like:




But yesterday, about fifty steps from that pic, the beach road looked like this:


And that beach looked like this:


And of course there are always people quick to take advantage of any situation:



And, as if that wasn't enough, there was a waterspout in the bay too.  Luckily that didn't touch land!



If you are interested, here's the information in the newspaper.

11 comments:

  1. Oh my word...Katherine - the second photo, and the new story are just way too much like Minnesota for me not to feel badly for suffering through that kind of weather. I am so glad we are headed for summer months...no snow, for a much needed respite from the harsh elements. I am guessing you are just beginning the season and have a few months ahead of you. It has a beauty all of its own but some days are harder to 'feel' the beauty than others. ;)

    I must also say that the first photo of the local beach (how it usually is) is just breath-taking. I love it...the mist rolling in the colors - just magnificent. Beautiful photograph.
    Do take care in that dreadful weather, Kathrine!!

    http://spacialpeepol.blogspot.com/

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  2. Thank you for your concern Sis! It's all over now, more or less. It was just a freak event. Just so weird for us to see this area that NEVER gets snow, to look white...

    Even the kiwifruit on this warm coastal belt had all been picked, so no damage there.

    Although I expect it wouldn't be over for the handful that had their roofs damaged, and the mall, although that is open as usual again this morning.
    And it turns out the roof just sagged, but didn't actually break... typical over-zealous reporting - and I fell for it!

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  3. PS there was a water-spout which luckily didn't touch land...!

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  4. Good grief, you had quite an adventure and lived to photograph and report it. I hope you are now warm and snuggly.

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  5. Fascinating weather. I love the first picture especially...

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  6. Lakeviewer, actually I was just in class all day... someone else took that pic of the hail. Ironically it was sent to my son who lives over an hour away, and he forwarded it back to me; it was a very localised hailstorm.
    But thank you, it is still a bit wintery today and I've lit the fire... so I am toasty warm!

    Yes well Juliet, I like the beach the normal colour too! :-)

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  7. How cool! Groan, I know!

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  8. I like decisive weather, Debby! And it WAS cool!

    NB. I've stolen some cool images off the news blog and added them to this post.

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  9. The added photos are pretty awesome looking, truly a fierce weather system. Thank you for posting them as well. Yikes!

    http://spacialpeepol.blogspot.com/

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  10. Sis - yep, but thankfully very unusual, and short-lived!

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  11. Having lived through three hurricanes - one of which destroyed part of my house - I can appreciate these. Scary.

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