It seems to be common practice internationally to name severe storms. I am old enough to remember when they were always female names. I don’t know who confers the names these days but they are now gender neutral or gender alternating. In this country, I think it is largely restricted to cyclones that come down to us from the Pacific and stall over this country.

Mark still remembers Cyclone Bola back in 1988 as does every other local resident of a certain age (I was in the maternity hospital at the time). We took a direct hit from Cyclone Dovi in 2022 but that was eclipsed by the magnitude of damage in other parts of the country by Cyclone Gabrielle the following year.

Friday’s storm was not, I think, a cyclone or even a cyclone remnant (for context, hurricanes and typhoons are what these cyclones are called in other geographic areas). I think it was just predicted to be a severe winter storm with strong winds, possible heavy rainfall and snow to low levels in the mountains. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that warranted an identifying name.

It turned out to be a bit more than that. As reports came in during the morning of road closures and warnings were issued against non-essential travel, we started to realise that it was not just a stormy day. When our power went out, I checked on line and saw that power was out for very large parts of the entire district which is a swathe of land stretching about 150km.

Our electric car is one that has the capacity to act as a battery power source but it can only be connected to a multi board to power plug-in appliances. I felt smug as I had bought the special reverse charging cord that is designed for this very situation so we could boil the electric jug for afternoon tea. We were just completing preparations for a night with neither electricity nor water when the power came back on as darkness fell. We were one of the lucky ones. The scale of restoring power to thousands of homes means it is the luck of the draw as to who has to wait.

Compared to Dovi, this storm is on a much wider scale but for us personally, the damage is considerably less. We only have three trees down, one of which was dead anyway, and none of them are major. There are many smaller branches down and debris everywhere but nothing major, by our standards. Spare a thought for those hit considerably harder.

What didn’t fall was the leaning pine tree I wrote about a few weeks ago.

This is climate change in action, folks, and your personal opinion of whether climate change is a hoax/conspiracy/over-hyped/not manmade or exaggerated is utterly irrelevant now. The climate don’t care what your personal opinion or political affiliation is. It is just going to keep climating and weathering along on its new trajectory at this stage.

As an aside, spare a thought for weather forecasters and the Meteorological Service who get lambasted every time they over-predict or under-predict a weather forecast. As I understand it, weather is a great deal more predictable when there are large land masses like continents. We are a collection of islands that spans about 1600km in length with an average width of 150km, set in the middle of vast ocean expanses. The weather forecasters do their best but it is not an exact science in our situation. Being just one or two degrees out in calculation of weather trajectories can make a big difference by the time it reaches our shores.

Stay safe. I expect the maunga – our mountain – will be covered in fresh snow when the cloud clears and we can see it again.