Dialogue: Downpours bring floods, mud and wet washing

By DANIEL JACKSON

It feels as if it hasn't stopped raining since February.

While the rest of the country has seemingly been basking in fine days or dealing with droughts, here in Whangarei and elsewhere along the eastern coast of Northland we have been having difficulty getting our washing dry.

Day in, day out, we've had heavy downpours of rain interspersed with days of showers, and even when the rain does stop we get clouds blocking the sun.

The eastern hills of Northland from Kaeo to Whangarei have already had more than the usual monthly amount of rain for May and 50 to 70 per cent above the average rainfall for the year so far.

According to figures released by the Northland Regional Council earlier this month, the Glenbervie rain station in the hills near Whangarei has recorded 1188mm since the beginning of this year. The normal amount is 690mm.

Whangarei itself has had more than 712mm, which is 90mm more than usual for this time of year.

About 140mm fell on the city in the first 10 days of this month, which is well ahead of the 126mm monthly average.

We have been getting at least one or two heavy downpours a month. Because these are often followed by days of drizzly weather or low cloud cover, the water doesn't get a chance to evaporate and hangs around.

Apparently the hills on the eastern side of Northland have a fondness for trapping rain with their height, making them the perfect catcher's mitt for wet weather systems coming in from the ocean.

The last time we had a dry spell of any particular length was in mid-January, when the weather managed to stay dry for three weeks.

Of course, being the mug I am, I spent those three weeks jammed in my office looking out the window while everyone else boated, fished, tramped and barbecued. When I did get a bit of time off, in February, it rained.

The poor old Whangarei District Council and its ratepayers are struggling to meet the cost of the slips and floods that regularly attack the district's roads.

With more than a month to go until the end of the financial year, they are faced with at least $1.2 million of damage from the wet weather.

I can sympathise, as I have had to stop parking my car on the lawn because it is turning into a quagmire.

I am taking a grim satisfaction that the lawn's kikuyu grass, which I previously considered one of nature's toughest substances and cursed many a time for knackering my lawnmower, is succumbing to a brown, soggy death as the mud claims it.

Water is also pooling in the garage below the house and now gives off a pongy and rather unhealthy smell. I have been kept awake at night by the thought of the poor little lizards who live down there constantly having to seek higher ground to escape the rising water.

All these things I can handle, I mean after all somewhere along the line I'm descended from an Englishman who probably thought this sort of weather was fine, but what is really starting to annoy me is trying to get my washing dry.

In a normal climate, I hang my clothes on the line before I go to work, expecting they will dry during the day.

Unfortunately, when Mother Nature has got it in for you, as she has for eastern Northland at the moment, this becomes impossible.

Since February I have been coming home to sodden piles of muddy mush on the ground underneath the line because the pegs cannot hold the clothes' wet weight.

Last week even the clothes line, much like I am soon about to, snapped under the weight of the wet weather. The line just gave up at the rusty spot where it wraps around its support frame.

I have now taken to hanging my clothes in the hot water cupboard or on clothes hangers inside the house near doorways and windows, wherever there is a draught, to get them dry.

If it wasn't for the fact that the rare sunny day up here is worth waiting through at least 10 wet days, I'd move to Aussie and put up with Australians just to be out from under the clouds.