Extreme Weather
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@antipodean said in Extreme Weather:
@Nepia said in Extreme Weather:
48 hours without power now for my Mum, they've been warned it could be another 3 days before they get it on again.
My parents are still without power too. Fair few jobs to fix for energex https://www.energex.com.au/outages/outage-finder/outage-finder-map/
Can't win. Either overhead powerlines are under threat, or subsurface pits flood and risk shorting or physical shifting due to slide
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Thargominda - about four hours east of Cameron Corner (border point between NSW, QLD and SA)
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Ta$man getting absolutely hammered again, @Chris-B hope you are safe mate
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@No-Quarter weather this year is fucked.
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@No-Quarter - House has been flooded a couple of times, unfortunately. First time in 160 years, I'm pretty sure (it's a very old house).
We're coping fine. Lots of help - professional and otherwise.
Thanks for the good wishes.
Enjoying the footy in alternative accommodation!
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@Chris-B how you holding up in this next wave of weather?
Pretty wild here and meant to be worse down there!
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@taniwharugby Luckily it wasn't as bad as predicted.We could cope with 3 inches of rain - five inches would have been messy and tested the fortifications around the house.
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@Chris-B yeah I think other areas got hit harder this time.
Parts of Northland and BOP in particular, we had 98mm in a bit less than 12 hours and 116mm in total in a 24 hour period....but saw some footage of the flooding in areas like Kawakawa, Opotiki who got hit harder still, not much fun for people!
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@taniwharugby said in Extreme Weather:
flooding in areas like Kawakawa
one of the things that shits me is when you get flooding in flood plains. I mean, that's the point of them - they look spectacular, but it's not an issue. It's the flooding in areas you don't want flooding that are the real headache.
Media just want the money shot/clickbait, though
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@nzzp this particular one was more the roundabout as you enter Kawakawa, the entire area including playground was well under water...yes, the area always floods, but this was different, possibly coincided with high tide as well.
Where I live, I drive past the Hikurangi swamp every day, which has been drained and is farmland, but right now, it has areas of flooding on it.
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@taniwharugby It has really been the cumulative at my place. We've had 500+mm in the past two months.
I still thought the river would have to come up another metre to get my house (and if it managed to do that there would be large parts of Richmond washing up in Wellington).
But, unfortunately, it broke its banks a km upstream - flowed across the plain until it reached the elevated SH6, which it couldn't cross - so it just took the path of least resistance down the side of the road and took out the houses in its path. Looked quite a lot like the footage of the Asian tsunami as it came across the paddock - and a very nasty WTF is that and where's it come from moment.
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@Chris-B yeah it must be quite scary and then having to deal with the aftermath, I mean, where do you start.
Even with insurance, there are limitations on what they can do particularly with limited manpower and qualified feet on the ground with such wide-spread devastation.
somewhat related thread diversion....I went to a seminar last week that was looking at construction costs, in particular, under-insurance (something Kiwi's are pretty good at) and some of the data was scary.
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@taniwharugby The insurance thing is quite scary. I am dealing with the renewal of premiums on the family properties and the premium is up over 10% on last year. The insured values (complete rebuild) we have covered at is over $150,000 more the current valuations supplied by registered valuers about six months ago mostly thanks to the insane costs of building materials etc. The same sort of thing applies to contents insurance. Little wonder people are struggling when that sort of thing happens (and don't get me started on Council Rates!) The insurance premium increases the good folk in Ta$man, BoP and Northland will undoubtedly be facing next year will not be nice, that is assuming they can even get any in the worst hit areas.
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@Higgins well, some valuations supplied by registered valuers are not that great either, many of those supplying them do so alongside a market valuation so thier qualifications to provide a rebuild one are a bit limited.
I believe there is a select committee looking at that issue presently....Quantity Surveyors are supposedly best qualified to provide the most accurate ones.
Evidence suggests 85% of NZers are underinsured, and some supposedly >50%.
As to your 10%, sadly that is about normal for many areas, but by the same token, down on the past few years increases most saw.
While less impact to residential consumers, some huge changes to Fire Service Levies in 2026 that will see large increases to the levy charged for those owning commercial property, down to how these are.charged as opposed to a rate increase.
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@taniwharugby In our case the rateable values are considerably in excess of the registered valuer's ones which is grating (we are in what is best described as a rural area, albeit on the very near boundary of what could be described as the "city limit" so it is only a smaller percentage of the valuation that belongs to "improvements"). We are fortunate in that my brother is a retired builder that is now a project manager so he was the one that has come up with the rebuuild value we have used for insurance purposes and we have full confidence in the figures he has provided.
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@Chris-B said in Extreme Weather:
@taniwharugby It has really been the cumulative at my place. We've had 500+mm in the past two months.
I still thought the river would have to come up another metre to get my house (and if it managed to do that there would be large parts of Richmond washing up in Wellington).
But, unfortunately, it broke its banks a km upstream - flowed across the plain until it reached the elevated SH6, which it couldn't cross - so it just took the path of least resistance down the side of the road and took out the houses in its path. Looked quite a lot like the footage of the Asian tsunami as it came across the paddock - and a very nasty WTF is that and where's it come from moment.
Any idea on the stopbank construction? I've a feeling it's a bit shit in NZ in general, it's the reason parts of HB got hammered in Gabriel.
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@delicatessen Yeah - it went over the top of the stopbank.
To be fair - the river was running at record levels - somewhere around 80-times its normal winter flow.
My house got built in 1860 and to the best of my knowledge the first time it's been flooded - then twice in a fortnight!
The bottom graph is the second major rain event - I think it went over the stopbank at about 350m3/sec.
Most recent rain event was starting to accelerate - another 50mms of rain would have sent it close to that level, because everything was running off.
https://www.tasman.govt.nz/my-region/environment/environmental-data/river-flow/waiiti-livingston
