Weather: We won’t mind if MetService gets it wrong this time - Craig Cooper

Predicting weather is a thankless task. People take delight when you get it wrong, and accuse you of ineptitude, writes Craig Cooper. Photo / NZME

OPINION

Napier is awakening.

It is barely 8am and hammering, punctuated with power tools, echoes around the valley we live on the edge of.

Perhaps someone is building an ark.

The wind is light, and grey cloud cools the temperature.

Meteorologically speaking, it is quite literally the calm before the storm with the angelic name arrives.

A national warning has urged Hawke’s Bay, and the rest of the northern North Island, to clear gutters, lay sandbags and “calmly and wisely” prepare for Cyclone Gabrielle’s arrival.

Forecasters have warned us of heavy rain, storm surges and severe gusts.

The warning, this century anyway, was unprecedented, and driven by fears that Northland and Auckland would experience accellerated flooding and landslides, given those regions were still sodden from late January flooding.

Perhaps surprisingly, there were few Napier-centric warnings issued, given that in November 2020, the city experienced a microcosm of the disastrous flooding that hit Auckland.

Although what do you say, other than the generic information that the local Civil Defence is reinforcing?

If you live on Mataruahou cross your fingers your house doesn’t slide down Napier Hill on to Hyderabad Rd and have an emergency kit/bag packed.

As we waved our son and his friends off to Wellington at the weekend, I was grateful they were driving away from the dark angel.

So was his mother, who took refuge downstairs, cleaning his room, eyes stinging.

“You never stop worrying,’’ she had said to me, as they embarked on the four-hour journey to Wellington, before catching a ferry for the road trip down to Dunedin.

She’s right. There is nothing like the fear of the unknown to get anxiety simmering away.

In Auckland, fear drove shoppers to flashback to Covid panic buying days (it seems so long ago, because we want to forget it) and grab water and toilet paper.

Wayne Brown was lured into a council broom cupboard, on the promise it contained a mortally wounded media drongo, and locked away.

The more media-friendly deputy mayor Desley Simpson fronted up to the public, nervously starting her pre-prepared statement with “I want to thank today by start ...’’ before reinforcing ‘’let’s get through this together’'.

Meanwhile, Aucklanders filled black rubbish sacks with sand at communal gathering points, lugging them into the boot of the car before they burst at the seams and became shifting sands of time wasting.

Some were in tears, there were sandbags at 10 paces after the free bags ran out and people were told to BYO.

In Hawke’s Bay, well, we weren’t quite so worried. Boats and yachts were secured, hatches were battened.

This coming Art Deco Festival will be a way to shake it off, by when the weather is expected to have cleared.

But today, if the weather predictions are right, Cyclone Gabrielle is here and our region’s creaking wastewater systems could be awash with filthy soup.

Predicting weather is a thankless task. People take delight when you get it wrong, and accuse you of ineptitude.

And say nothing when you get it right. Today though, not many of us will mind if they got it horribly, horribly wrong.