Around 11 am today, low tide after some 55m rain at Waikawa Beach this week, and more in the Tararuas, the river was running fast and strong, but not particularly high.
Overnight though, the river Cut breached, and the next high tide, around 5 pm, will surely swirl through.
Note the rock groyne on the left of that picture.
The vehicle entrance is holding, but we’ll see what happens with the high tide and fast flowing river.
We recently scanned in some photos from the archive that are relevant and interesting. There was a river cut on 05 June 1994.
The next photo shows the groyne the day before and has pen marks showing where the Cut was to be made. (I believe.)
Then we leap forward to 09 July 1994, around a month later. Written on the back of the photo is river back to normal
. Note the pen marks which seem to show where the Cut had been made.
And about that rock groyne … This Crown Copyright photo from 1993 shows what seems to be a very much longer rock groyne.
View a full size, full quality 3.1Mb version of this aerial photo.
And if you’d like to know why rivers never run straight (for long), this brief video has a great explanation.
I had put my money on the 3.6m tide on Thursday evening, after what looks like another 4 days of rain. The new beach access track looks like it will be gone by then as well
It reminds me of an old quote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”