Flooding

Three weeks ago, while Gayle and I and the five youngest children were in Canterbury for the weekend, there was a lot of rain over here. That Saturday, our three oldest drove down to the river in Simon’s 4WD Pajero to check out the flooding, and Esther took pictures and a video. Little did we know that this weekend would be even worse! I would guess that the flood waters were about twice as high. We never got any pictures this time, though; we stayed inside while it was pouring for several days! Simon had planned to work on the piles under his house on Friday, but as fast as he scooped the water out of the holes it flowed back in! A lot of roads were closed with slips, and the road from here to Greymouth was closed for a day and a half because of flooding. The rain stopped last night, and already today when we went to church the Ahaura River had gone down quite a lot. It’s still as high as I’ve ever seen it!

This is Orwell Creek. This weekend, the water was over a foot deep on the road here!

That’s the Ahaura River ahead, in the gap between the trees. This is normally a parking area.

The nearer bridge is the old one, which by now is completely gone. The other is the new one.

This morning, the water was still up over that spot where the pipes are! This afternoon it had gone down to where the gravel is.Here is a video Esther made of the flooding. The first two clips are from driving along Orwell Creek, both going toward the river and coming back, and then some from crossing the bridge. The road along Orwell Creek is where we walk when we go to the riverbed for picnics.