Flooding

As most readers will know, I live in Auckland, which has been subject to torrential rain this weekend, resulting in wide-spread flooding, and three people dead, so far. It was certainly a record-setting event, with close to 300 mm of rain recorded over a 36 hour period at one site, and nearly 250 mm of rain at Auckland Airport (which was closed due to the resulting flooding). It's fairly safe to say that the amount of rain we got can be attributed, at least partly, to climate change. Expect more of the same in coming years.

My own house has not seen any flooding, for which I'm grateful. Our house is on a flat section in the middle of a downward sloping cul-de-sac, which has good stormwater drainage.

However, my wife and I did travel in the rain to the Elton John concert at Mt. Smart stadium on Friday. The rain was heavy and persistent throughout the day, yet the organisers weren't cancelling it. So, we made our way to the stadium, parking in the city, then catching a bus to the stadium. At that point streets were already starting to flood.

We were prepared for a wet event, putting our best wet weather gear on. Alas, even that didn't prevent becoming soaked fairly quickly.

Grabbing some food before the concert, we took shelter under the gazebo of a food stall and munched our fairly average (and pricey) pizza until just after 7pm, preparing to make our way into the stadium to our seats for the concert to start at 7:30pm.

The rain got heavier and heavier, and eventually people started exiting the stadium – with the event being cancelled about 20 minutes before it was scheduled to start. Great! Of course, the decision was the right one. Carrying on would have involved a lot of danger, with the concert having to proceed in pouring rain. No doubt the musicians wouldn't have liked that idea very much!

So, reportedly about 11,000 people then exited the grounds, looking for a way back home in the pouring rain (with approximately 20,000 more still on their way). Luckily for us, one of our companions hadn't quite made it, and was still in their car fairly close to the venue, so they were able to transport us back into the city to pick up our car and then drive home.

The drive back into the city took us past lots of flooded areas, and we saw a number of idiotic drivers attempting to drive quickly through deeply flooded roads.

We got back to our car park and picked up our car, and made the trip back home uneventfully. As I've written in the past, we have an EV, and people have asked whether it's safe to drive an EV in wet weather. More on this a bit later.