The 100-Year Storm

So this past weekend we had a nice little trip to Queenstown with some more visitors. More on that later. But as we were driving back, we noticed the closer we got to Christchurch, the harder it rained. I started getting texts saying, "I hope you guys are home by now". Huh?

Apparently being a mere 5 hours south of Christchurch meant we missed all the storm warnings, because they knew it was a big one. Here's what everyone saw on the news:

Well, that can't be good.

We were clueless to what we were in for. We made it home fine, in pelting rain and crazy wind, and settled in for the evening with our friends. We enjoyed the storm and guessing how fast that wind gust was (120km/hr!). We went to bed and slept, sort of, through the crazy storm. In the morning, we woke up and it was still happening. But we were up on the hill and had no idea what was happening below.

Until we got on Facebook and saw multiple friends of ours had flooded houses. The beautiful high road between our house and the beach had about 10 landslides (slips) on it. There were full on torrential waterfalls in places that don't have waterfalls. They classified it as a 100-year storm, meaning the likelihood of another one like it is only one in 100 years. I'd never heard of this before. I thought we called these things hurricanes. Ha.

Anyways, the photos. Almost all of the photos are from Stuff.

And you thought living by the river would be "nice".

Downtown central Chch

Protecting the important things in life. (Look at that car!)

The flats below our neighborhood 

At least the storm made transportation for eels a bit easier!

There is NOT a waterfall here. This is coming off our mountain bike trails!

This weekend was supposed to be the Lyttelton Urban Downhill Race. Scott's been looking forward to it since last year, and had even gained sponsors for his racing it. Then the storm happened…

Scott took this one...

Thats the shuttle road for the race… yikes! The water also brought a slip down onto one of the massive jet fuel tanks in Lyttelton, causing a leak and forcing evacuation of a couple dozen homes. The race has been rescheduled for November 30, because that's when they estimate repairs will be done!

We are all good and fine up on the hill, no slips, no flooding. No lost power, windows or roofing. We're very lucky. But poor Christchurch, she just can't catch a break!

Oh yeah, it is still our "summer" here. And this was no tropical storm. There's as much snow on the hills as there was in the winter. We miss being warm. We miss flip flops. We miss the sun.