BOISTEROUS WEATHER

Taranaki Daily News, 17 August 1935, Page 6

BOISTEROUS WEATHER

COAST LASHED BY GALE STORM CAUSES MINOR DAMAGE. RECORD SEAS AT NEW PLYMOUTH. WILD SPECTACLE IN MOONLIGHT. While crested breakers that took the breakwater in their stride and rolled on in spume beneath the wharves, sending stinging sheets of spray from the wall sweeping' across the harbour glistening white in the clear moonlight; waves that made the West End of Ngamotu beach, even up to the cottages, a lagoon, and lapped round the broad base of the palladium; crashing seas that wrenched a way through the stonework and swept scornfully through the baths custodians residence; such were the fruits of an ocean lashed by ■ a vigorous northerly wind yesterday. The spectacle of line upon line of marching rollers in an ocean of foaming white was a .magnificent one in the vivid moonlight late last night, but the storm wreaked little vengeance upon property. There was but one vessel in port at New Plymouth, the coaster Totara, and she was berthed on the side of Moturoa wharf nearest the breakwater. She was tightly held, however, and a watchman was on the wharf to watch the continual thump as the tide went out after the peak period at 10.30 p.m. At that time toe seas that were intermittently hiding wharf lights and ship in clouds of flying spume swept through behind the heel of the breakwater and poured into the basin by /the dredge. The launches in the boat harbour in toe lee of the Newton King wharf experienced nothing but considerable exercise. An open launch moored by the pilot boat at the heel of the breakwater wallowed at her moorings, full of water, but was not otherwise damaged. An inspection of Ngamotu beach at 10.30-showed spent waves from the north spreading over the area whereon beachgoers’ cars are parked in the summer, and sending gentle rips round the island that was the palladium. EXPERIENCE AT BATHS. The cottages were beyond the sea’s reach but further down the beach a Daily News reporter encountered a wave that nearly engulfed his car and drenched him as he stood on the spur whereon toe municipal baths are built. The custodian, Mr. E. Meuli, was just retiring after an anxious hour and a half spent vainly trying to repel water that attacked the front and rear of his residence. The floor of the building was awash with foaming water that poured through a breach in the protective stonework. The railway station and goods yards were cloaked in flying spray from the huge rollers; trucks and buildings gleamed eerily in the moonlight. -Pools of water at East End showed where the high tide had risen over the concrete embankment in but slight degree, and all along the beach to the Waiwakaiho masses of foam lay where the last rush of the waves had eaten into the roots of the sandhills. As far as the eye could see the ocean was white-crested, and somewhere beyond was the coastal vessel Hauturu, which left Onehunga yesterday morning arid reached New Plymouth at 1 o’clock this morning after receiving a severe buffeting. Wind and rain did minor damage to New Plymouth properties. Broken wireless masts were reported by half a dozen owners, and at one exposed Fltzroy residence a window was blown in and the clothes line carried away.' Many houses with a westerly aspect leaked under the stress of driving rain and hail ,showers that swept in from the sea at intervals through the day. At one suburban residence the cover of a fire-escape on the balcony was lifted by the win’d, flung through a window and thence to the verandah below, where it smashed a large plant bowl and distributed a good deal of glass, wrecking pottery and plants. Gardens in the more exposed portions of the town suffered a good deal. Many shrubs were tom and the hope of early spring displays of flowers and vegetables was discouraged considerably. Mr. H. J. Wood at the North Egmont hostel- reported last night that the building wa§ the centre of a terrific thunderstorm during the afternoon, but that later the weather veered, as elsewhere, to the west, bringing colder temperatures and a lessening in the force of the gale.