Photos

The Quiet Before the Storm

This is Opua in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

We were holiday in Paihia, in the Bay of Islands last July. Paihia is 220kms ‘up north’ from home, and we arrived up there the day before a Tropical Cyclone came bringing heavy rains and strong winds.

This is the view of some of the boats moored at Opua, 4 kms from Paihia. The weather was so very still and quiet – it definitively was the quiet before the storm.

We had noticed the difference in the colour of the sky as we drove north. And here at Opua the colours were quite silver looking, but facing the sun they looked quite gold with the sun shining very faintly through the clouds.

About 12 hours later at 3am, the storm arrived. We had been given candles and matches and the Civil Defence warned us of many things that could happen - fortunately nothing did go wrong for us!!

Fortunately our tropical storm are no way as bad as the hurricanes that have hit America and China so far this year.