The frightening power of water.

Pedantically it would be wrong to say the rain has stopped. There is still the occasional light shower. But it is correct to say that RAIN has stopped.We are no longer having an inch of rain in little more than an hour when it was at its heaviest.

On my walk after getting home from a day at the Community Centre I saw the results of that deluge of water, and often mud. A family whose home is accessed by an entry sloping down from the lowest point of Rimutaka Place were trying to restore access to the property. Without actually intruding and peering closely at what they were doing, it seemed obvious to me that the metalled drive from the end of the concrete had been scoured out by at least a metre.

I then turned left onto the Rimutaka Huia Track. Well formed and safe to run down. No longer. Within a few metres the water had combined to scour out a 10 - 15 cm deep channel all the way down. Much of the gravel had been washed away (somewhere). I was intrigued to see that the steps were pretty much intact. Perhaps because the track for the 20 m before the steps had a small fall and the water was more likely to go off the side of the path and down through the bush to the stream below. 

The stream remains much higher than usual but close to 2m lower than the highest it had been been. The water remains full of clay.The essentially flat path thereafter to the steps up to Huia Road was mostly intact but there were a couple of places where the path was covered in mud and/or scoured out by swirling water.

My blip was taken where I chose to turn and return home. This was the footpath beside Huia Road at one of the lowest points , and at the bottom of a long hill down from Woodlands Park village. The water found a weakness between the edge of the road and the large concrete blocks used to retain the ground under the path. The blocks have been cast aside as if a giant were rolling dice. Yesterday, one of my reasons for staying home was that the water across the road at this point scared me.

The clean up begins. We are fortunate and not one of us has had any damage to our home. Or ourselves.