Freaky February

Hot tropical sunny days with dramatic skies ending with full moon evenings.  Heart-jumping thunder and lightning with waterspouts in the Hauraki Gulf.  Flash floods in Glen Eden.

What an extraordinary freaky February Auckland - and we are only half way through the month!  Goodness knows what's in store for the remainder of the month.  Bob McDavitt has retired after over 40 years working with the MetService predicting the weather and is probably secretly relieved he didn't have to make a prediction for the rest of Freaky February. 

They say that the weather has some sort of cosmic effect on a person's behavior, especially the full moon. Anyone recently experience strange, grumpy, erratic, excitable, argumentative, even angry behaviour from those around you or work colleagues or those you work with?  Yes?  I have. Is it the weather?  Oh coupled with the trauma of resuming 5 day working weeks and the start of the working year grind, sprinkled with an all but a distant memory of what you did during the holiday break 2011, it must be.

Is it El nino?  Is it a warning from above?  Is it a-typical mother nature behaviour?

I do know there was great communication from media about the strange weather occurences that have happened such as the loudest thunder-clap I have ever heard in my life this week. When the thunder happened, shortly after colleagues informed us that it was not a terrorist explosion of a nearby building as we speculated, but thunder, as reported in the NZ Herald.  However, I didn't find out about the waterspout until the evening news...and what an impressively scary water spout that was.

But what if there was no power and no internet and what if the telecommunications server was down?  How would we be alerted?  I know that in Waitakere there is a tsunami warning siren for the locals.  I have no idea if there is warning siren in the Auckland CBD.  They probably would have the Town Hall bells tolling continuously to warn citizens of an impending tsunami. I'm positive they have a process already in place, I will find out.

Oh and just a reminder everyone.  I don't claim to be an expert on emergency management procedures and processes or an oracle of knowledge on natural disasters because I'm not. I am merely an ordinary citizen from Auckland just wondering if anyone else ever stops to think about these dreaded issues; and maybe to provoke discussion within your networks or at the very least, to provoke thought.  I am also curious as to what extent has the average Aucklander prepared themselves in light of the natural disasters occuring in other cities and countries in and around the world.

Someone said to me that blogging about this topic is so depressing and not an appealing issue to discuss with friends and colleagues let alone to even think about? Fair enough, there is nothing inspiring or fun about earthquakes or tsunamis I agree.  

Maybe this is a topic for discussion reserved for around the family dinner table, during dessert...

Enjoy the rest of Freaky February everyone.