After the storm

Well, today we had a tremendous storm, going from mild rain to torrential downpour, the likes of which I have only seen a few times in my life, and never more than a minute or two. This kept up for over 3 hours, with power outages, flashes of lightning, and thunderous booming. I would have taken pictures of it but my camera was in one spot and I was in another attempting to stay dry. Shortly after lunch however, you would hardly known we had been through such a storm from the view of my room. The sun was shining and it warmed up quickly. I then decided to take a walk, which I do several times a day, down to the shore and often along the beach and up the hill. There was a great bustling of birds around and everything was wet as expected.

Just another gorgeous day in Leigh. There are farms all along the road to the station and there is one with sheep right on the reserve. They were merrily chowing down on the wet grass, not apparently phased by the storm.

Then at the bottom of a gully where there is access to the beach, I started to notice some major changes. Normally a small river ends at the beach, the water flows under the sand into the ocean. Well, this clearly was in a state of change as all the water ran down the slopping banks of the surrounding valley, through the river, and overflowed over the beach. Over the beach may not be an accurate term, more like cut a swathe through the beach to make its way to the ocean. This resulted in a 4 to 5 foot trench in the beach, exposing rocks and wood which had not seen the light of day in many years. A sulfurous smell rising from the beach as an enormous amount of sediment was deposited into the ocean in a great visible plume.

I continued my walk down the beach, the cliffs still glistening from the rain. A few cormorant like birds were sunning on the beach before heading to fish in the murky plume.

Underestimating the heat and my camera running out of battery forced me back to the station to continue working on my thesis proposal. Tomorrow is my errand and rest day, and I plan to enjoy the marvels of the future, and go see a movie that is not to come out for another week for those still in the past! After seeing Star Trek, I will venture to Warkworth to run my errands, get groceries, and hopefully pick up some weight and fins so I can do a little snorkeling. Until then I will leave you with a nice shot of Goat Island in the sunshine.