Towards The Ned

The day started with a jolt, an earthquake of 5.1 magnitude at 16 km depth 35 km north-east of Seddon. Poor Seddon. Vicki McKay, the announcer on National Radio, told the country….”Oops Wellington is just having an earthquake as I speak”. She was reading a news bulletin at 12.04 am, the time of the quake.
Vicki is worth a mention as it was she who was hosting the all-night program three years ago yesterday when Christchurch and Canterbury suffered the very first of the series of big earthquakes. At 7.1 magnitude, it created an enormous amount of damage in Canterbury but mercifully no-one was killed. Vicki kept everyone in the affected area, and indeed the whole country, up-to-date with all the chaos that ensued. Folk were sending in text messages and she was comforting them and giving sensible advice. To my mind, Vicki was a heroine.
So back to today, three years plus one day on … AC, one of my Blip friends, blipped at 12 24.am that her cat was most unhappy. The quake had woken me as well and I had little sleep afterwards. Hence I visited Blipfoto in the small hours.
We were also suffering from a fairly wild and windy night with a south-east gale whistling around our house. The wind had died down this morning and the sun was shining as I walked the dogs. Today’s image is looking south and up-steam towards The Ned in the top right-hand corner. The southerly wind was still causing clouds to scud up the east coast to Wellington. No doubt the weather was foul across the Strait. That often happens here. A southerly will race the cloud banks away from the land and off Cape Campbell, away from the Blenheim area and across to Wellington. It can be cold and wet over the Strait but nice and sunny here around the Wairau Valley and Blenheim.