It’s in the air

/ Su Leslie

Kaipara weather; rain on the way. Shot on the wharf at Shelly Beach, Kaipara. Image: Su Leslie 2019

Air and water.

As tide, wind and rain, they have immense power. A few years ago I watched very similar clouds roll down this harbour. By the time I got home on that occasion, the storm had brought a tornado which ripped through the area where I live, killing three people. Homes were flooded and people evacuated. A whole street was destroyed.

This time, we have been lucky.

Posted to One Word Sunday | power

34 thoughts on “It’s in the air”

  4. We start our six months of hurricane season on June 1. I recognize those clouds very well. As you say, the immensity of the power they can unleash is wild. Hope you continue to stay lucky, Su.

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    • We get lots of downgraded tropical cyclones, and fronts that gain power over the Tasman, but not extreme weather like the hurricanes parts of the US and Caribbean islands experience.
      Tornados are fairly common but usually small and roof-ripping rather than fatal. Having said that, in this part of Auckland, we’ve had two in seven years that have caused deaths.
      The real damage that we experience is caused by human intervention — mostly removing vegetation so water isn’t soaked up. We get a lot of flooding and landslides — and still we scrape the hillsides and build houses. ☹️

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  7. Oh yes, the tremendous power of nature. As if to show us tiny human beings that we can very well destroy much of our nature but it also can fight back and get us…. We got to feel it in a lesser degree, but it’s still devastating.

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  9. It’s an immensely beautiful shot, Su, even if those clouds bring bad weather with them. Glad no harm was done this time! Two days ago a lightening bolt struck the chimney on the house opposite mine – it was so frightening and loud, I’ve never experienced this thing before. The chimney was blown to bits and big pieces of stone hit the pavement – luckily no one was hurt.

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    • That’s awful, and I’m so glad no-one was hurt. Falling masonry is so dangerous. Last winter, we had lightening strike in our street, and it was really scary. I could see the black clouds rolling in, and the thunder kept getting louder and louder. It makes me appreciate how terrifying it must be to experience the truly huge storms.

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      • Especially when the masonry falls 5 floors down! Honestly, I thought it struck into my balcony so loud was it!
        Storms are definitely terrifying – I used to hide under my bed when I was little. I’m still not very comfortable around them and always wonder at those people who go outside and love these kind of weather.

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        • Five floors!!
          We were visiting friends in London once when the wall between their house and the next collapsed. It really was like dominoes falling, but very fast. The masonry missed the room we were in by only a couple of feet — which we could only see after the enormous dust cloud had cleared. It happened too fast to be scary at the time, but I shiver to think back on it.

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          • Oh my God! That must have been so scary! So glad nothing happened to you! I always shudder when I see on tv when they destroy some building or other with controlled detonations and so many people go there to watch right there! You would never get me anywhere near!!

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          • It was surreal, and probably good that we weren’t really aware of it until it was almost over if that makes sense. It happened so quickly. The thing I remember most was the choking dust.

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          • I can imagine how awful that dust must have been – it’s already bad enough when they’re building stuff (which happens all the time around here). 😦

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  11. Loving Husband & I were just talking a couple of days ago about the inordinate number of deaths that occur as a result of more folks scaling mountains. Could it be that we have lost our reverence and awe of nature & her power, and so, underestimate the dangers & perils of such ventures?

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    • I think as a species we have come to believe that we can conquer everything in nature (and destroy much of it in the process), and, yes, I think people do underestimate the power of the natural world. 😦

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