Eepers, the sun came out so I thought the worst was over, but apparently not. Last night's heavy rain and garden-shed razing weather was just a precursor. Lastest severe weather advisory states:

"Widespread shower and thunderstorm activity is expected over the upper half of the North Island this afternoon as a deep low crosses from west to east. In areas north of about Taupo to Northland and east to the Gisborne ranges, squally fast moving thunderstorms are expected in many places. Some of these may be severe with associated wind gusts to 110km/hr or more, small hail, and a significant risk of a damaging tornado."

WTF? Tornadoes? This is Auckland, not Kansas. We haven't had a damaging tornado for over 10 years.

At least it's coming from the north-west, and we're on the South-East side of a hill, so there's some shelter.

Um, rachelcaine, can I borrow a warden or two?

In election news - turns out we're still waiting for the special votes to be counted. There are 212,000 of them (about 10% of total eligible voters), and Labour only holds a 23,000 vote lead. So it could either give National the lead, or force Labour's main coalition parter the Greens below the 5% threashold. If that happened they would lose all of their 6 seats, since they didn't win a single electorate outright. Currently they are sitting on 5.07% of the total vote. Talk about a fluid situation. Usually I hate politics but this is fascinating.

New Zealand had a General Election today, to choose who will govern our wee country for the next three years. All the votes are in, and... um... we don't really know who won. The two main parties came in around 1% apart, with just over 800,000 votes each. Neither has enough seats in parliament to govern alone. So now it's up to whoever can broker a coalition with the minor parties. I think it could be a week before we find out who will come out on top. It's a bizarre situation where those parties who have the fewest elected members hold the future of the country in their hands. And it's not for the first time.

( Cut for boring political waffling... )

On top of that, some lunatic stole a small plane and threatened to crash it into the Sky Tower in Auckland City in the middle of the evening. 500 grumpy diners and staff were evacuated. The pilot eventually crashed in the sea just off Kohimarama and was hauled out alive.

To top it all off we've just been hit by a huge storm (as at about 1.15am) which has the potential to raise roofs and cause floods, not to mention spawn the odd tornado! It's supposed to peak between 3am and 10am.

Yep. It's been a wacky old night.