Water Carved Our Landscape Now it Risks Lives

New Zealand’s Hawke’s Bay is known for its fine wine, but many of the region’s vineyards are now under water, along with homes and roads in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle, Hilary Whiteman reports in a story for CNN.

The weather system didn’t make landfall in New Zealand, but it caused widespread destruction, killing at least nine people, displacing thousands, destroying roads and cutting access to smaller communities in the country’s northeast, Whiteman writes.

New Zealand owes its stunning landscape partly to the country’s long record of intense rainfall. Rain regularly dumped on its mountains has carved rivers that rage after downpours.

Sam Dean, a principal scientist at NIWA, said Cyclone Gabrielle was likely to prompt an acceleration of the Government’s national adaption plan to mitigate future climate disasters. “You can see an urgency to get some of these things in place and I think that’s been motivated, definitely, by this event,” Dean said.

Original article by Hilary Whiteman, CNN, February 16, 2023.