GREAT CLOUDBURST

Taranaki Daily News, 4 January 1929, Page 9

GREAT CLOUDBURST

DELUGE IN HA'WKE’S BAY.

MUCH DAMAGE RESULTS. Napier, Jan. 2. The residents of the Waipawa district, Central Hawke’s Bay, were alarmed yesterday when a cloudburst drenched the countryside, causing extensive damage to gardens. The water came down with such severity and in such volume that it found a way into dwellings, beat down flower gardens, pitting the beds with incredibly large holes, flooded any low-lying ground within a few minutes, and created hundreds of miniature rivers on the hills that scoured and scored the roads.

Traffic was held up everywhere at one stage. When the downpour was at its height vision was so hindered that sight would carry no farther than five yards. The figures on the face of the town clock at Waipawa, one of the bracket type, and only a few feet above the street, could not be read from beneatji. Tennis lawns, the local bowling green and recreation ground were transformed into lakes within a fqw minutes to a depth of six inches. The situation might have become dangerous had the storm not spent itself as quickly as it started. A few minutes more of such conditions would have meant an ugly situation. The fall took toll of potato crops, which in many parts disappeared under water. Brilliant lightning at stages lent an eerie atmosphere. The storm appears to have beaten a track a few miles wide. Its course was clean-cut and defined, for in places adjacent villages were treated differently, one suffering the full violence of the tropical deluge and the other escaping completely. Many picnickers were ma*ooned and motorists were forced to abandon their journeys, . In the memory of the oldest inhabitants, no downpour of such violence has ever before struck the district. This is the second visitation of such a nature within a fortnight, the last one being a hailstorm that left behind it damage tn hundreds of pounds.