Lake Forest: anchored; frozen to get frozen; absurd; Australian adventure

You may know of Auckland, New Zealand’s record rain.  I think the official total was 240 mm/9.44”, the greatest one day rainfall in the city ever.  Even more fell nearby.  This resulted in thousands of homes being flooded and at least four deaths.  The death total is not impressive.  Here in the U.S. we routinely kill more than that in mass shootings every day.

I emailed Zane, who lives in Auckland and sails his 26’ junk-rigged, PANGO in local waters, and got the above photo and this reply:  

It has, frankly, been a wretched summer.  I have got away for a total of 10 days on PANGO so far.  I just beat a gale back from Great Barrier Island this time last Monday, and yes, since then we have had record rainfall, land slips, housing falling down hills, and unfortunately, four deaths so far.

I have attached a few photos from my parent’s house - we got flooded in three of the four rooms downstairs and in basement.  Still, we got off lightly.
The NZ Herald and Stuff.co.nz both have plenty of photos of the mayhem.

Auckland got, in the space of four hours on Friday, three months worth of rainfall.  The infrastructure could just not cope, but I doubt many cities in the world, with the usual underfunding of infrastructure as no one wants to pay local council taxes, would have coped.

It is pounding down again this morning as I type, and hopefully it won't get close to the historic levels.

A somewhat amusing (?) side note:  As I was bailing with the bucket in one of our basement rooms, I did think of your book 'Storm Passage'...and consoled myself that while I am bailing to stop the flooding in the house getting worse, at least the house won't sink, unlike Webb's EGREGIOUS might have....actually, I am not sure that is amusing, and I am not sure ironic is the correct word either, but nevertheless that is what came to mind for a minute.

What is certainly amusing is that in one of the photos attached, you can see a couple of my spare anchors in one of the rooms, looking like they are being put to use.

Here is a link to an explanation of the deluge.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/explained-what-caused-aucklands-wettest-day-and-where-climate-change-fits-in/M7A456YCAJGJ3GEGZ7HUMOFJRU/

I wish all my New Zealand friends a drier future.

In Lake Forest it is merely cold.  

We had 7”/178mm of snow over the weekend, following which temperatures have dropped to well below freezing.

Yesterday I had an appointment to have a couple of patches of pre-cancerous skin refrozen.  The beautiful skin cancer specialist’s office is in downtown Chicago.  While I was waiting for the train, the temperature was 8F/-13C and the wind chill -6F/-21C.

When I got up at 6 am this morning the temperature was -4F/20C and the wind chill -13F/-25C.

Impressive ice sickles outside our kitchen window.  The longest are more than 2’/2/3meter long.

I am due to fly to Hilton Head Thursday.  Carol is going to have to tough this out alone.

I thank Tim for this:

I am re-reading with pleasure Patrick White’s novel, THE VIVISECTOR, for I think the third time. It, along with VOSS, is my favorite of his novels.  I came across this quote in reply to a question about what books in a wealthy man’s library are about:  “Voyages.  Explorations.  By men whose appetitive for suffering wasn’t satisfied at home.  They had to come in search of it in Australia.”