So, Welling­ton is cur­rent­ly the recip­i­ent of a whole lot of bad-ass weath­er and you may have received an email with an alarm­ing list of all the dam­age the storm has done, like this:

Pub­lic access to the Basin Reserve has been closed. Approx­i­mate­ly 15 win­dows in the RA Vance Stand have blown out.
Ful­ton Hogan work­ing on Air­port roof which is lift­ing Coun­cil Parks staff have closed off the walk­ing tracks on Tinako­ri Hill due to the dan­ger caused by many falling trees. Pow­er poles are in dan­ger of top­pling on the seafront at Lyall Bay.

Slips! Bus­es and trains closed! Pow­er out­ages! Pret­ty bad, huh?

Except it’s not. Find out the truth after the jump!

That list is a weird email hoax, based on an actu­al storm report from 2004. The coun­cil have sent out a denial along with a gen­er­al “don’t pan­ic” mes­sage.

NEWS RELEASE

1.30PM — 7 Octo­ber 2008

Bogus storm-dam­age report — please ignore

A bogus storm-dam­age report is cir­cu­lat­ing today on email groups around Welling­ton — con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion from a storm in August 2004.

Advice from Welling­ton City Coun­cil is to ignore the email — a copy of which is attached below.

The email con­tains exten­sive lists of streets closed by slips around Welling­ton, reports of dam­age at Welling­ton Air­port, details of exten­sive delays to trains and bus­es, school clo­sures, and ‘huge seas’ block­ing Moa Point Road.

The City Coun­cil has received a num­ber of calls from peo­ple anx­ious about the emailed report — head­ed WELLINGTON WEATHER WARNINGS — how­ev­er we stress that the infor­ma­tion is entire­ly incor­rect.

While there have been strong norther­ly winds in the Welling­ton region today, and heavy rain — none of the inci­dents on the email being cir­cu­lat­ed have occurred. They all occurred dur­ing a fierce souther­ly storm in August 2004.

The City Coun­cil will attempt to find out how and why the email was ini­tial­ly cir­cu­lat­ed — but in the mean­time our advice is please ignore it.

For fur­ther details please con­tact:

Richard MacLean — Welling­ton City Coun­cil Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, tel 04 801 3578 or 021 227 8180.

But best of all, Met­ser­vice says the out­look is “Rain clear­ing. Blus­tery north­west­er­lies eas­ing.”

Pho­to from PhillipC’s Flickr pho­to­stream, appro­pri­ate­ly enough of a storm two years ago.