Editorial: A drizzling of a grizzle at what defined Hawke’s Bay in 2022

The rain simply refused to stop in 2022. Photo / Hawke's Bay Regional Council

OPINION: The Christmas lunch is being eyed up by our favourite bacterias, and we’re into the final days of 2022.

It’s time to sit in a deckchair and opine about the year that was, just a little. It’s one of everyone’s favourite (non-food related) indulgences at this time.

When the clock strikes midnight on December 31, the curtain will come down on what was a tough year for many of us.

This year was when most of us caught Covid for the first time. We lost our head of state. We watched idiots set fire to Parliament grounds for, well, who even remembers what?

As the anti-vax infernos were extinguished another fire lit by inflation started to burn through our back pockets.

But in Hawke’s Bay, it wasn’t political fires that defined us this year. Instead it was water. Because it was so inescapably, unrelentingly, wet.

In some ways 2022 (which was already breaking records in November for the wettest year ever recorded in many parts of the region) feels like a marker in the ground, and an easy marker to slip in at that.

For so long our region has been hyped as a place of placid temperate sunshine.

My parents hoped they’d have that version when they booked a spot near Waimārama Beach for a holiday only to find it was as thunderstormy as Johannesburg.

And the people we hire from out of the region and move here for the ‘lifestyle’ darn near expect it. We, those of us living here, expect it.

But Mother Nature was angry in Hawke’s Bay this year. She delivered flood, after rain, after flood, after rain, after flood.

Hail came regularly too. Waves surged. Paddocks sat so sodden for so long in spring that many crops couldn’t even be planted.

And the final kicker was the December downpours that swept through to finally ruin an already struggling Christmas strawberry crop. I would say it was the cherry on top, there weren’t many of those left either.

So many great things happened in the region this year.

Hastings’ central city investment gave it a lift. Napier got to show its Art Deco off to international tourists again.

Houses for those desperately in need started to be finished. Kittens made a home for themselves in Hawke’s Bay Today’s ceiling, and our hearts.

And throughout the year our reporters have delighted in telling the stories of the people in this region doing outstanding acts of individual and group good - hundreds of examples of shining humanity.

If we can just sort the climate for 2023, we’ll be set.

- Chris Hyde is editor of Hawke’s Bay Today