The Great Storm of 2013

I remember England's Great Storm of October 1987 very clearly. Wind speeds got up to around 120-130 kph, millions of trees came down, and people lost their lives.

My clearest memory is of making my way home from school that day. The train line was blocked and I had to get off a stop earlier than normal so I was walking home along the high street when all of a sudden a huge gust of wind picked me up off my feet and literally blew me hard against the bus shelter which I was walking past.

That was enough to completely stop me in my tracks and I remember going into the off licence next to the bus shelter and asking them to call my mum for me.

My mother, bless her, drove out to rescue me.

Last Thursday/Friday, Wellington experienced a similar storm.

We all knew something big was coming, so the day before most people I know had been to the supermarkets to stock up and we had our torches and emergency kits ready. But the initial forecasts were that we'd get a big drop in temperature and possible snow. The South Island got the snow - masses of it - but Wellington got an extreme hurricane force storm. It's not easy to predict the weather here, as it's so influenced by the oceans  and mountains all around us, so hats off to those forecasters for just knowing something extreme was on its way and predicting the time of its arrival almost down to the minute.

Wind speeds got up to 200 kph, and the rain fell in buckets out of the sky. Media reports indicate that we haven't had a storm like this for 37 years, and are comparing it to the infamous Wahine Storm of 1968 which sunk the Inter-islander ferry.

Several days later and the city is slowly being cleared of fallen trees, and we've all been living with closed roads, no trains, missing roofs, houses full of sea water, fences blown away, there are thousands of houses with no power and a lot of closed schools.

Meanwhile, our new garden now has a tree that sits at a 45 degree angle, and we're not quite sure what to do about that.

Other than that, our biggest drama was when we got a knock on the door in the night from a man who lives across the street - it turned out our next door neighbour's big trampoline had blown right over our fence, across our garden, across another fence, over the road, smashed through another fence and gone through the man's window. The fire services rescued it the next afternoon, but the man's window is still missing...