The thing they dub the super storm.
The cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes...whatever description applies to whatever is being thrown up by the elements.
Back in 1968 we had a visitor to town...to many towns.
A visitor called Giselle and Giselle was a cyclonic visitor who arrived from Norfolk Island and tore half the North Island apart, plus a slice of the south.
We heard Giselle at work in the very early morning just before the sun arrived, or would have arrived had the skies been clear.
Giselle tore the doors of the garage off and bit off a few sheets of the corrugated iron roofing for good measure.
Well, bad measure really.
All along the seafront-facing road there was stuff everywhere.
Branches, bins, fence palings...you name it.
The only real downer to it all was being told that school had not been closed for the day and we were expected to show up as normal.
It was while at school we heard one of the ferries that plied the waters between the islands had hit something and was said to be going down.
I can remember the teacher telling us, and advising us that if anyone in the class knew of someone who may have been travelling aboard the Wahine that day they should best go home to await further news.
It was all quite surreal.
All of a sudden losing the garage doors and a few sheets of iron didn't seem so destructive.
Dad mentioned something about it being "the cyclone season" when the rogue weather systems would wander down from the tropics in search of somewhere else to pummel.
Storms could be quite exciting, especially when there was lightning and bellowing thunder about, but those cyclone things with their vicious winds and horizontal, heavy rain were unsettling, to say the least.
Through the years we saw the television images coming out of midwest America when the tornadoes tore through, and they were terrifying.
House and cars lifted into the air and were torn to shreds.
And from the east the typhoons wrecked villages and piled boats into heaps on the nearby land.
What always got me thinking was the sight of people emerging into the devastated terrain, holding onto what little they had been able to salvage and looking for somewhere to shelter, as their modest homes had all disintegrated.
Victims of the cyclone and typhoon "seasons" which, frighteningly, were pretty much an annual event in those parts of the planet.
Such events however were seen by some as worth getting closer to, and there have been documentaries centred on these thrill-seeking hard-hatted camera-wielding individuals who have been dubbed "stormchasers".
Their targets are the things we tend to avoid, although what they capture on film is the sort of thing we often target for an exciting watch.
The weather can be an unpredictable and destructive element, no doubt about that...as parts of this land has seen over the past few months.
Property is broken, lives are seriously unsettled and the things we take for granted (like power) are taken away.
For living room-based stormchasers here's hoping the power will be available on Wednesday night at 7.30 as Prime rolls out a documentary called World's Wildest Weather.
And yep, this is as wild as it can get and focuses on the people who survive what are best described as catastrophic slices of meteorological destruction.
Or, put simply, wild weather?
● World's Wildest Weather, Prime at 7.30pm Wednesday. Grab a cup of tea, a sandwich, and batten down the hatches.
ON THE BOX
● The Seventies, Prime at 8.35pm Tuesday: Yes, these were the days when rock bands and music writers created songs that actually had tunes you would immediately recognise and remember.
Today (and I will concede age is most certainly showing itself) they all sort of sound the same.
And how many bands containing participants in their 20s and early 30s are touring today...let alone recording?
So it is time warp time for we who rocked through the '70s, and I daresay time for most young kids today to shake their heads and leave the room...headphones on and some bewildering slab of i-fodder held firmly in their hands.
● Prince Harry's Story: Four Royal Weddings, TV1 at 8.30pm Wednesday: Four words for those who were beginning to get just a little wearied by the pathway to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Get used to it. There are still six days to go yet...lots more to be shown and said, And even after the knot is tied the story will most certainly not be wrapped up.
For things of a royal nature, when the participants are so appealing to media circles and gossip columnists, are ratings riches...apparently.
Have we had a fashion profile yet? Given that Meghan's wedding dress is estimated to cost $580,000 that surely must be on the agenda. Until then...there's this.
