That Thor Bloke Again

Thor was in town for a party last night, providing pyrotechnics and punctuation for the change between a boisterous northerly and gale-force southerly.

After a week of mostly sunny days, light breezes and mild temperatures, Tawa’s weather took a distinct turn for the worse yesterday, Tuesday 13th October 2007. A gusty northerly had arisen bringing intermittent showers, the odd squall, and temperatures had declined.

Initially I blamed the change on friends who had returned from Argentina where, among other things, they’d managed to crash the Patagonian Express, prove that Wellington isn’t the windiest place in the universe, and they had ridden more steam trains than I’ve had hot lunches ”“ or so it seemed.

Clawing their way back across the southern Pacific Ocean against the trade winds, grazing the edge of Antarctica as they did so, their flight had taken more than an hour longer than the outward leg ”“ a direction happily taken by shiploads of our ancestors over a century ago who partied their way across the southern ocean in steerage sipping complimentary drinks, watching in-sailing movies and reading New Zealand Company in-voyage magazines while the trade winds whisked them to the land of milk and honey. Yeah, right.

Anyway, the dismal day that saw gobbets of rain being thrown at north-facing windows could only have resulted from my friends’ flight opening an inter-dimensional worm-hole to Tierra del Feugo along which ghostly gusts were travelling. Video they had taken there has convinced me that Kiwis really can fly ”“ we only have to flap our arms a bit more vigorously.

However, as the northerly eased and the evening progressed, I realised that the weather disturbance was due to a more regular and real visitor, me old mate Thor. He’d been in Wellington during the evening, visiting various hostelries while he charged himself up for a couple of hours of partying.

He took to the skies over Wellington at about ten o’clock last night, flinging bolts of energy and thumping drums, and pretty much had a whale of a time until his mum called him home at 11:30. By which time, about 100 lightning strikes had been recorded by a Lower Hutt weather station and 58 had been recorded at Whitby.

As Thor’s mum tucked him into bed, the wind changed to the south and flights into Wellington International Airport adjusted their flight paths while passengers from earlier flights collected their luggage to the sound of rattling kneecaps.

By midnight, the southerly had brought steady rain which turned into a terrific downpour at 12:30. During the next hour-and-a-half, 22 mm of rain was recorded at Tawa, peaking at a maximum rain rate of 60 mm/hr at 1:19 a.m. Spouting overflowed, but it seems that only minor overflows of storm drains occurred, generally where accumulated debris caused clogging. Rain eased after 2 a.m. while the southerly rose to gale force.

MetService had Thor booked for an encore performance this morning, but we haven’t seen or heard him here at Tawa. Perhaps his mum grounded him for staying out so late last night, but I think he is probably still in the scratcher reaching for the hangover cure. It was quite a party.

2 Responses to “That Thor Bloke Again”

  1. Dorothy says:

    I just hope that Thor does not bother visiting again! No doubt he was also responsible for the pelting of hail that we received here in Miramar! The thunder and lightening also went on for several hours which I found very unusual. Do you have any records to show how long these storms usually last?

  2. Ken says:

    No, I don’t. New Zealand is in a windy part of the world and our topography and island structure means that the conditions that allow thunderstorms to form are highly variable. (as opposed to continental areas where large areas of land provide a more stable heating environment than vast tracts of ocean).

    Maybe you could try MetService, but I’ve never seen any published information that describes a typical NZ thunderstorm.

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