Sunday, June 25, 2006

Winter

So it is nearly Canada Day, and it is winter here in New Zealand.

For most folks (including me, before we moved here), the idea of winter in the South Pacific conjures up ideas of palm trees, sunshine and pleasantly warm temperatures.

Here in New Zealand, however, winter is winter. It does not mess around. And here's the proof. Below are three shots taken of roads in the North Island just this week. It is on what's called the Desert Road, which comes from Wellington and takes you to places like
Taupo (scroll down to April 4th on this one), which Karla and I visited back in April. Honestly, it is a desert there--a sort of sagebrush grassland that looks a lot like the Okanagan back in BC.

Anyway, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:





Here in Wellington, things are just plain rainy rather than snowy (thank the Lord!). But New Zealanders are tough to get through all this. Remember, there is no insulation in the houses here, hardly any central heating, and power outages have been happening all around the country as a result of the bad weather.


Down on the even colder South Island, there are still a few hundred people without power. Either you've got a wood fire, or you're frozen out, basically. So there's quite a few people living in motels down there at the moment.

Not Canada cold, that's for sure. But pretty bloody cold nonetheless.


UPDATE: The NZ Herald says there are more snow storms on the way... :' (

2 comments:

Karla said...

Yeah, we had hoped that too... but when you think of it, NZ is the closest inhabited place to Antarctica, and a lot of the winter winds come straight from there. Yuck, eh? ;-)

Karla said...

Maybe just imagine it's a snowbank (like that colossal one in the Polo Park parking lot every year)...? ;-)