Tag Archives: Weather

Whakapapa vs Whangaparaoa

Posted on by Brad Heap

At first I was laughing at this press release by the NZ Police which was released in the middle of yesterday’s storm.

***Urgent Media Release***

There have been reports in the Media about the evacuation of Whangaparaoa.

There is NO Evacuation of Whanagaparaoa.

However, I think I may have no have worked out where the confussion arised from. At 10.30am the Whakapapa Ski Field at Ruapehu was evacuated due to the storm. Reading more about it you can see why:

Between 10am and 10:40am the wind speed went from 0 to 100kph and it’s now sitting at over 200kph. Our extremely hardy road crew are currently out being blasted by wind and snow as they fit chains onto all vehicles to get the public safely down the road.

Now I can imagine that the media would of probably just confussed the word Whakapapa with the word Whangarparaoa quite easily. One is a ski field on Ruapehu which often gets hits by snow storms. The other is a peninsula north of Auckland with lots of homes on it. Given the storm would of been bad at both areas a mix up in words is not supprising at all.

The Weather “Bomb”

Posted on by Brad Heap

I will do a full blog post after the storm.

But nothing that exciting to report.

Given that this is meant to be the worse storm in years it seems very similar to this post from february this year (5 months ago, not years): http://www.brad.net.nz/blog/2008/02/the-flooded-garden/

Update #1: Okay we can now call this storm a real storm. Power cut out at around 3.50pm this afternoon. Came back on at 6.45pm which meant I missed the news. Grr.

I listened to the 5 and 6 o’clock newstalkzb radio updates. First there were 35,000 and then at 6pm 53,000 homes in northern Auckland without power. At the time they stated that any above ground power cuts would not be fixed today as it was dangerous. So I was presently surprised when the power came back on at 6.45pm.

The eye of the storm crossed Albany at around 5.50pm and it was indeed a sight to behold. Not as impressive as you see in the movies, however, you could still see the wall of storm cloud and clearish skies directly above you with no wind or rain for about 15 or so minutes. Quite cool really.

Note to self: Make sure you have candles, fresh torch batteries and gas for gas cooker ready for next storm. I had a cousin drop off candles and batterys but tonights dinner was cold. Thank God for canned fish. I had a milo the instant the power came back on.

Power restored over networks

Date: 26-07-2008
Updated at 6:45pm.
The following areas have had power restored throughout the day. There still may be pockets of no power remaining due to further network damage and damaged customer owned service lines. Our crews will continue to work throughout the night and tomorrow to restore power.

Atkinson Rd, Belmont, Browns Bay, Coatesville, Helensville, Henderson Valley, Howick, Laingholm, Mangere East, Manly, Manukau, Maraetai, Northern, Papakura, Riverhead, Snells Beach, Spur Road, Swanson, Takanini, Torbay, Parts of Waiheke, Waimauku, Warkworth, Wellsford, Woodford Ave,

Update #2: Well the power came back on and then about an hour and a half later my Internet connection died. I can’t win. It has finally come back on, 15 hours after it went out. Grrr. Anyway storm is over now. I will post full analysis soon.

Customers may experience intermittent disruption of Wireless connectivity in Auckland (Albany, North Harbour, Rosedale) between Saturday, 26 July 2008 8:30 p.m. and Sunday, 27 July 2008 11:05 a.m.. Engineers are working to resolve this issue. Woosh Wireless apologises for any inconvenience caused and thank you in advance for your co-operation.