Ex-TC Gita
Currently (12:00 20 February 2018) in Upper Hutt we have gentle rain and no wind, this despite MetService showing strong winds and rain through tomorrow.
The two pix shown are taken from the Ventusky weather modelling App (iOS and Android). Both show precipitation rates (over a 3-hour period). Green/Blue is light, through yellow/orange is moderate, through red is heavy—the darker the colour the heavier the precipitation.
The other shows the forecast for 07:00 tomorrow morning.
The track of the storm has/is drifting south and it will cross NZ somewhere around Greymouth or a little north.
I’d say it has just about blown itself out.
MetService was quite correct to issue the warnings. Cyclones, and ex-cyclones are notoriously fickle. It is not unkown for the them to double back on themselves and for the intensity to shift, up and down, during the duration of the storm. However, I don’t think we have anything to be too concerned about in Upper Hutt.
Some Choice News!
DOC is rolling out a new tool to help figure out what to tackle first when it comes to protecting our threatened species and the things putting them at risk.
Why does this matter? As Nikki Macdonald from The Post points out, we’re a country with around 4,400 threatened species. With limited time and funding, conservation has always meant making tough calls about what gets attention first.
For the first time, DOC has put real numbers around what it would take to do everything needed to properly safeguard our unique natural environment. The new BioInvest tool shows the scale of the challenge: 310,177 actions across 28,007 sites.
Now that we can see the full picture, it brings the big question into focus: how much do we, as Kiwis, truly value protecting nature — and what are we prepared to invest to make it happen?
We hope this brings a smile!
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