Water outage Elsdon,Titahi Bay 0800-1200 18/05/11

A large water main feeding into Titahi Bay and Elsdon has ruptured. Those areas and parts of the BD and Ranui may be without water until midday today 18/05/11. Repair crews are on site.

Severe Thunderstorm Watch

A Severe Thunderstorm Watch has been issued which includes the Wellington area

An active front is expected to pass over central New Zealand between midnight and dawn. Thunderstorms are expected to develop on this front. The thunderstorms could be severe, producing gusts of 120km/h, as it crosses over northwest
Nelson, the Outer Marlborough Sounds, northern Wellington, Kapiti Coast, Horowhenua and Taranaki. Wind gusts of this strength can cause some structural damage, including trees and power lines, and may make driving hazardous.

Take care if you are out and about overnight! It may cause more surface flooding as well.

Severe weather

If you haven't just been woken up by that massive rumble of thunder, you may have already noticed that it's been raining a fair bit!

The Fire Service are currently run off their feet dealing with flooding incidents around the region, and there is quite a bit of surface flooding around Porirua, and we can probably expect more as this frontal system moves through over the next few hours.

Hopefully things shouldn't get as bad as they did in the last big rainstorm in Porirua, the tide is going out so shouldn't be causing too many problems with the stormwater outlets, allowing it all to drain away.

If you are having problems with flooding on your property from overflowing stormwater etc, don't forget to call the council - 237-5089 - we can't try to fix what we don't know about - so give us a call, even if you rang us last time as well.

Also take care when driving out there - please don't drive or wade through floodwaters, the wake from your vehicle can cause problems, or it may be too deep and disable your car, and if you are on foot you may not be able to see that a manhole cover has popped and fall in.

Stormwater is often contaminated with sewage, so don't let your kids go playing in it either.

Emergency udpates on Twitter

I've just taken our Twitter account -www.twitter.com/poriruaEMO - off its automatic update from the blog. We'll save it for emergency announcements (and the occassional test message) so that you can sign up to it with your mobile phone and not worry about the other news stories that I might post here.

You can expect to get notifications about Severe Weather Warnings affecting our area, major road closures (if we hear about them in time), things like tsunami warnings, and other big emergency events, and I might post the magnitude and other details for quakes big enough to be felt locally.

If you've got ideas as to what other kinds of notifications you'd like via Twitter, let us know in the comments!

But wait, there's more

Apparently no one listens to me when I say enough is enough.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4956336/Tornado-strikes-Auckland-leaves-trail-of-destruction

I think we've had enough now, thanks...

I go on holiday for just a little while and look what happens!

The hard-working staff of the NCMC had just reverted to business-as-usual after the Canterbury quake, and someone goes and declares another State of Emergency!

Homes evacuated, towns cut off, power & phone outages, damage to water supplies, and too much water everywhere it shouldn't be. Not the way most people want to spend their Easter holidays in the Hawkes Bay.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4948026/Hawkes-Bay-evacuations-complete

The life cycle of the Wellington Umbrella

You'll have to imagine David Attenborough narrating this...

Umbrellas, although they are common in many urban areas throughout the world, are a relatively rare species in the Wellington region.

They are usually seen in their dormant state in department stores and hall closets, but once the rainy season begins they embark on their mating journeys, parasitically latching on to commuters for transport to places where other umbrellas may be found.

If weather conditions are right, their last act is to use a gust of wind to turn inside out, releasing spores - much like a fungus, and then they crawl into the nearest rubbish bin to die.

I sometimes wonder why anyone in this part of the country bothers with an umbrella, as our rain is almost always accompanied by strong winds that mean the raindrops are coming in almost horizontally, and your umbrella doesn't stand a chance.

Today isn't an exception - with a Severe Weather Warning for gales gusting to 110kph, and a cold snap that has already had a friend of mine in Nelson complaining about snow!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4898787/Gales-forecast-so-leave-your-brollies-at-home

EDIT: Some people obviously didn't head the warnings... - http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4903008/Winter-arrives-with-a-hiss-and-a-roar>

Some stats from Sunday

Peter Kreft at the MetService has kindly provided us with some statistics from Sunday's heavy rain event. In the hour from 11am to noon, the weather station on Mana Island recorded a whopping 39.2mm of rain, with a maximum rate in the middle of the worst downpours of 2.4mm per minute - no wonder there was flooding! The water was falling out of the sky faster than it could run off!

There is some stormwater system upgrades included in the draft annual plan - http://www.pcc.govt.nz/News---Events/Public-Consultation/Annual-Plan-2011-12 so don't forget to have your say on whether there needs to be more done or not.

And also, if you are ever having problems with stormwater flooding on your property, please call the council - 04-237-5089 (24hrs) It's one of our performance measures to respond to the problem within an hour of notification, but we have to be told there's a problem first, and we can't read minds!

It got really wet!

It got a bit more than just wet! There were streets flooded all over town, over a metre deep in places. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4815041/Porirua-drivers-stranded-in-floods And the library & Pataka are going to be closed for several days as the carpets need to dry out - they had two inches of water through them, and the staff were all hard at work with wet vacs trying to suck up all the water before it started affecting the books. One of the things we saw a lot of yesterday was kids playing in the floodwater - http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4815519/Playground-turns-into-pool-as-heavens-open This really isn't recommended as it's almost guaranteed to contaminated with sewage, and you wouldn't let your kids play in a septic tank would you?? There were also a report of a child falling down an open manhole where the cover had been blown off by the pressure of the water - fortunately someone was there to pull them out, but since it was completely underwater things could have gone badly wrong. Another complaint from people living near flooded intersections - don't drive through the floodwater! The waves created by vehicles passing through were washing into properties.

It's wet!

In case you haven't noticed we are experiencing some quite heavy rain! Ooh, and occassional thunder.

Please take extra care while driving, and watch out for surface flooding and slips!