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.