I’ve survived many storms and cyclones in my time, but usually from the comfort of a house on a hill somewhere, out of reach of floodwaters. I once used to crew for a racing yacht; the worst I can remember was sailing from Wellington to Picton as a storm blew through Cook Straight. Nine-meter waves and 60-knot gusts over hours of open water. Nature, when she is unleashed, is a tremendous force.
And so, we were watching the weather early last week as a tropical storm system decided it was going to intensify into a cyclone. Dovi was born in the super warm water of the South Pacific, sucking in extraordinary amounts of water, wrapping itself tightly, dropping the pressure significantly, and turning toward New Zealand.
Wednesday
It is unbelievably hot and muggy on the farm. It has been the last few days, temperatures hovering around 30 degrees Celcius and very high humidity. Moving is sweating, and farm work can only be done at the beginning and end of the day when it is cooler unless you want to die from heatstroke.
K is packing out and leaving for Auckland to attend an advanced stunt rider’s horse training camp. When she went to head to Wellington for a flight, we were more worried about COVID than Dovi. As she leaves, the dust rolls back in from the gravel road.
The farm is dry. We had got in a lot of supplementary feed the week before because the grass was rapidly disappearing as the stock ate it down. There were cracks in the paddocks, and dust was kicked into the air everywhere you walked. Keeping animals cool and providing them with shady spots was a priority.
Wednesday night is hot, the temperature doesn’t drop under 21 degrees, and the fans are running in the house.
Thursday
Being single-hand in charge of a farm, even a small one, means a lot of work. Covering that and keeping up with my other work makes for a long day.
Feed out goes well with pigs, chickens, and horses on some supplementary feed. The horses play nice and the pigs, well, they are just overjoyed every time they see you. Strange little creatures, we’ve never raised them before; they are intelligent and demanding.
Most of the day is spent in the office, with K having sorted out any urgent jobs before she flew out.
Dovi is slowly creeping closer. The models have it passing over New Zealand, but no one is entirely sure where it will land. She is still powering up, sucking up the warm water like a global vacuum cleaner, and toward the end of Thursday, the sky is grey.
I’m preparing to head for bed when a cavalcade of cars along with a cherry picker drive past down the lane. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, the power goes out, and when you don’t have moon or starlight, it’s pitch black.
It’s started to drizzle by the time I find a torch and head out the door into the weather. My neighbour is rescuing some cattle from another neighbour after doing their magic fence ninja trick, most likely because the power was off. Nothing is more fascinating than watching a 450kg animal walk through a six-wire electric fence. It comes built into the genes.
Sure enough, it’s the power company, they’ve got a cherry picker in my paddock, it’s about 20 meters in the air, and they are chopping back my trees from near the power line. It’s now raining, with poor lighting, and this is about as dangerous as you are going to get.
I’m unhappy.
I ask why they have decided tonight is the night to chop back the trees sitting in their cut queue for over eight months. I am told they were “arcing.” Fair enough.
I then asked why they didn’t call me to arrange access. They have no idea.
I point out the several hazards, including the hot-wire (lucky for them the power is off) and the fact there is stock in the paddock. They could give a shit.
I leave them to eviscerate the trees, which on looking the following day, have partially taken out the inside fence, are hanging precariously in the trees themselves and clogging up the drain. All of which presents problems when the storm finally does arrive.
I mutter to myself as I walk back up the lane in the rain, “This won’t be the end of that!”
Friday - 20mm of rain
It’s been raining steadily for most of the day. Cyclone Dovi is now heading straight toward the north island of New Zealand; she is carrying a massive amount of moisture over a small area.
Friday, I’m starting to think about moving some stock around off the lower ground but decide to wait a few more hours and keep an eye on the rain rate and weather radars. Moving stock by yourself is tricky; some animals are straightforward to move, while others, like sheep, are bastards.
I have been monitoring the level of the lagoon, usually a good indicator of how wet it is and how much to panic. It’s barely moved in the last two days. I’m starting to think that I might get away with this.
Saturday - 85mm of rain
The ground is saturated now. Gone are the cracks, and mud is returning to the gateways. There is a lot of surface water, but it’s not deep. The temperature is dropping along with the pressure, the lagoon level looks good.
I move the horses up to the higher ground, anticipating a cold change so that they can access the stables and get out of the temperature when it comes. There is some standing water in the other paddocks, but not much.
The rain gets steadily heavier over the day, but there is no wind, which is a concern because it’s not moving away whatever the weather is doing.
By 3 pm, it’s torrential rain, and I get a call from our nearest neighbour; they’ve got water running under their house. I slosh over there, and John’s dug a series of channels and built some minor diversions to try and keep it away. We’ve got the same problem at home, water travelling under the house.
We vainly try and sweep the pool of water away and then settle for a cup of coffee. We have the same problem at our place. We live in a long sloping section of farmland that ends at the river. It starts on a small hill about a kilometre up the road and rolls through several properties ending at the Ruamahunga River.
As I walk back, I can see my other neighbour across the road moving his stock up onto the hill. He’s halfway up the hill on his quad, and there are rooster tails of water coming out the back as he travels. It must be seriously wet up there, and it’s all coming down the hill to us.
The water levels in the paddocks still look good. They aren’t growing much, and the lagoon still looks good.
But, it’s a sleepless night as I set the alarm for every couple of hours to wander out in the weather to make sure the water isn’t rising. It isn’t.
Sunday - 60mm of rain
It’s still raining, and Dovi is now on a direct path for the Taranaki, which puts it on a track north of the valley, a small mercy. Any significant wind now would likely pull down rain sodden trees.
Mid-morning, I wander down into the bottom paddocks to perform the perfunctory checks. The standing water is higher, but it appears to be draining into the lagoon, which it is meant to do.
But in half an hour of sloshing around, it changes, the water starts coming up fast, and I decide it’s time to move the remaining stock up to the higher ground.
You can see our house and our neighbours just to the south in the picture above. The lagoon is the three-quarter moon below that. You can also see that we are very close to two major rivers that join up on the bottom left.
What is likely to have happened is both those rivers are now full, and the water running off our land has nowhere to go. Worse, as the rivers fill, they tend to spill back. By late Sunday, the entire area is effectively underwater south of the neighbour’s house. People are being evacuated from the Taumata Island road area on the right of the picture.
The heifers and their ram, who has decided he is a heifer (he lives with them full time until his services are required), are easy. They know the drill, straight through the gate and up the hill. Even the ram has enough brains to know this is a good thing.
The problem now is that the gateway is about ankle deep in water and rising, and the remainder of the sheep stubbornly refuse to move through it. Not a chance; it might as well be a hundred feet deep. This leaves me with a problem because the water is coming up quick.
The neighbour appears, sloshing across the paddock, as I am internally debating getting the sheep into the ute to go through the water. It’s a welcome relief, as wrangling sheep single-handedly is hard work.
John tells me there is no way the sheep are going through the water, so he sets about dismantling the fence to the next neighbour’s place.
I am then promoted to farm dog, and John issues me instructions on where to stand when to move, when to put pressure on, and when to push.
Did I mention sheep were idiots? Despite getting them right up against the gap in the fence, they turn and face the two of us; instead, they are literally backed into the hole. After a couple of false starts and forty-five minutes later, one bolts through and the rest follow.
John and I slosh back up the paddocks in the rising water. The sheep retreat to the far side of their new paddock and look back at us with disdain. We had foiled their attempts at self-destruction, which seems to be the aim of all sheep. It’s great to have good neighbours who will get out in hideous weather and help.
Now Dovi throws a new spanner in the works; as it passes over the North Island at speed, it sucks up a river of cold southerly air and the temperature drops rapidly. At this point, K would be putting covers on the horses, and while I am being slowly trained in horsemanship, it’s not a skill I possess. Certainly not one I can do in a cyclone with skittish horses.
I don’t know enough about horse anatomy, but I suspect that sudden changes in temperature aren’t quickly allowed for, so even though it is relatively warm, the temperature drop has them starting to shiver.
The only place I can get them out of the wet is the stables, where the hay is. To get them there, I need to get the cows out of the adjoining paddock because if they get into the stables, they will a) break something1 and b) never leave because of all the delicious hay.
I’m sure that farming is some kind of massive sliding puzzle…
Somehow I manage this feat; the cows and ram are under shelter in the correct paddock, the horses are now in the stables, and I get a warm feed into them. Everything is now in place, fed, and safe.
I ring Bruce, the neighbour whose fence John and I have vandalised to save the idiot sheep; he’s relaxed about it and tells me he can see the Ruamuhunga River from his house (it must be very high.) He’s waiting on his son so that they can go and move some cattle, down the road, as the stream running through the paddock has turned into a raging river.
From what I can see, the dairy farmer across the road has got everything locked down, his stock up the hill and is towing his kids behind the quad bike on water skis.
The couple who live on top of the hill send me a video from the other end of Taumata Island road; it doesn’t look great, water is lapping at people’s doorsteps, and it turns out that some were rescued by enthusiastic volunteer firemen.
Everyone agrees it is the worst flood we have seen in a long time, even 2017, the time when Frank, the previous owner, had to rescue alpacas from the same paddock as my suicidal sheep.
At this point, now early Sunday afternoon, it occurs that the road into town is likely to be cut off before long. This is yet another time I am pleased that we bought a large and unruly four-wheel-drive ute.
The trip into town is surreal, paddocks are underwater everywhere, and the wind and rain are still fierce. Cars are being turned back where the road is several inches deep in water, and in other places, the water races across the tarmac in a rush.
Even in the ute, a giant beast, you can feel the water tugging at the steering wheel every now and again. The town is very quiet; as the water is rising around the valley, people are bolting home before they are cut off.
The drive back shows that the water is still increasing, and there seems to be a lot of sightseers out now rueing the choice of bringing their low slung cars as they creep through the streams.
Late afternoon and the cyclone blows out. It’s churning its way out to sea, having wrought havoc across most of the North Island. K is on her way back from her training. While not as wet in Auckland, she was camping out in 130km winds, thankfully the tent held together, but it was a sleepless night.
The dogs have been locked in for most of the day; they are still being trained, and having them around all the various stock movements would have been more a hindrance than a help.
They were delighted with the new lake I had created for them, spending a couple of hours frolicking and swimming.
You can see in the picture above the flooding. None of that water should be there, and it also stretches back behind me. Also not seen in this picture is that our flatpack tack shed (yet to be built) is trying to float away, a setback to our glamping project.
By dark, the water is starting to recede, and given we are on an old river bed within a couple of days; we are back to near normal.
It’s not likely to be the last rain we see this season as La Nina seems to be throwing several cyclones south and west out of the tropics before they are caught by trade winds sending them back across New Zealand.
The upside is that any thought of drought has now been drowned, literally, and the grass growth has been inches in the warm days that have followed. Tonnes of feed is growing, putting us in an excellent position for winter, meaning we can hold off on supplementary feeding for longer.
The lagoon is a rich source of sediment, which has been deposited across the paddocks, we were near getting fertiliser into the bottom paddocks, but we may not need to now; nature has done its job.
It’s the same across the valley for sheep and beef farmers that rely heavily on grass. Unfortunately, it’s a massive blow for croppers (barley, wheat, and the like). As the water passes through a paddock, it knocks crops flat, and they don’t recover; worse, it’s tough to clean up because the crops aren’t standing up.
It’s now Thursday of the following week, and we’ve unpacked the weekend’s events with the other locals at the pub. It was the talk of the night, photos were compared, tales told, and everyone shared how many mm’s of rain fell at their place.
It’s balmy and sunny, I can see the grass growing as I write this, and we have learned many new and valuable lessons. We’ll be ready for the next big wet.
Postscript: These are some of the weather tools we use relentlessly.
Metservice - Warnings and watches are useful
ICARTE6 - Our on-farm weather station
Earth Null - Amazing site with accurate forecasting and graphics. (Tip: Clicking on the Earth button gives you multiple views.)
Wind Alert - Highly localised forecasting that focuses on the wind.
Himawari-8 - Japanese real-time satellite focussing on the south pacific, you can roll back the calendar to specific times.
Think of cows as 450kg toddlers. They are quite curious but don’t know their strength.
Sounds like it was a rough storm out your way. I'm glad it's past now.