KEY POINTS:
It must have been terrifying in the 'Naki this week.
When natural forces reduce all our 21st century technology to so much junk, we realise just how vulnerable we are.
There's not much our plasma TVs and our automatic door openers, even our cellphones, can do when they come up against a tornado.
But before we go stoning 4WD drivers in the street for stamping their whopping great carbon feet all over the planet and stuffing up the climate, a little sanity.
There have always been strong winds, storms and tornadoes in the 'Naki.
As far back as Cook's second voyage in the 1770s, violent and frequent storms were recorded along New Zealand's coastline and during the Taranaki war in 1868, Nga Ruahine leader Titokowaru, who had planned an attack on a redoubt just 5km from a British Army camp, relied on strong westerly winds to carry away the sound of gunfire during his attack, thus preventing reinforcements from being alerted.
He was as good a forecaster as he was a fighter, and his ambush of the redoubt was successful.
There have been tornadoes reported every couple of autumns, so although these particular ones were especially destructive, perhaps we can put the damage done down to the fact that the region is more populated than it was before, so the potential for damage is much greater.
If a tornado sweeps across farmland and destroys a barn, that's not going to make the news. But if it destroys six houses and lays waste to a community, that's news.
I had a number of people phoning me this week, ready to blame global warming for the Taranaki tornadoes, but they seem to have the memory of a goldfish.
There have been extreme climatic conditions in this region long before SUVs were invented.
So while I can accept that tornadoes are a freak of nature and terrifyingly destructive I cannot accept that Remuera blondes in their four-wheel-drives doing the school run are responsible for creating them.
