Update on the weather

We are OK. There are five creeks between us and the highway, and four of them were up yesterday. The only one that wasn't really high was the Roses Road one (the drainage creek in our valley). There are no slips on our place, none down the valley, but lots of little ones on the Moutere Saddle. Our road is muddy and very slippery, but intact. But basically because we are a short, dead-end valley, we didn't get the volume of water to cause the damage that others did. The luck of geography.

We are pretty self-sufficient; the drains have worked as they should, all our roofs feed into water tanks, and the overflows are piped away well downhill. Plenty of clean drinking water (!) and no power outages. We haven't been generating electricity as there's been no sun for the PV cells - and we put the fire on to heat some water as the solar hot water system wasn't getting sun either, but the grid-tie system means we can pull from the grid when we aren't generating, so we were fine :-)

It also sounds like "driving" after 8am yesterday morning in Nelson was pretty near "stopping" instead; Richard Kempthorne was saying on the radio that journeys that normally take half an hour were taking three hours. Kathleen & Frits who live along Whakatu Drive said they were watching people on their way into town just sitting in their cars for ages (some apparently ran out of petrol, they were waiting so long).

Jan was up in Auckland yesterday and Wednesday, but he got home OK last night at 6. The Wairoa was still up at Appleby Bridge, but the bridge was open. Still some surface flooding.

We are just fine, but I am not travelling today; Civil Defence are asking people not to travel unless it is essential. The traffic load means that emergency services can't get through, and the bow waves from cars are damaging property. Aside from the treacherous nature of the driving itself!

And take a look at the Maitai - from 'normal' to yesterday (from Stuff at http://static2.stuff.co.nz/1323907641/157/6145157.jpg):

Thank goodness for having had the dam at the top to control the release of water is all I can say!
Cheers

Sam