Auckland was hit last night by some freakishly strong winds, apparently strongest since 1970 something!. Stronger than the cyclone we had the other month. they were 115km winds, last night topped at 131km just down the road on the harbour bridge. It was closed for a couple of hours while they waited for the weather to, er, blow over.
No damage at our place, the playhouse even survived, it is still on it's foundations, and the roof is still on. We could feel our places shaking with each puff of wind, quite scary listening to it howl overland and it came in from the ocean. I was certain we were going to loose roof tiles, if not the whole roof. One of our internal doors that is always closed, somehow opened up though! Other places were not so lucky. about 120 odd houses damaged just in Auckland. I've seen a couple of cars with trees on them today, heaps of huge solid trees just split in two like matchsticks. Debris everywhere. We have had rain for the last couple of days, so nice soft ground, and then throw extremely high winds, and a lot of trees have just toppled over. 61,000 houses were without power this morning, our friends still have no power. some Schools were closed today, not our one, but the 3 nearest and all of the ones up the east coast were. The weather has now headed south, and there have been chainsaws going all day, cleaning up. there's quite a few trees down in my street. I haven't gone into the park yet to see what's going on there.
We had a bit of warning it was coming, but it wasn't hyped up by the media, so quite a few have been caught out.
Very glad you are safe and sound!!! Please stay that way (((((((((((((((x))))))))))))))))))
