There is a temptation, in the cold light of a Wednesday morning, to file Tuesday's emergency under the heading of "another wild day in Wellington". We should resist it.

The data is no longer ambiguous. What used to be a one-in-100-year coastal flood is now happening in this city roughly twice a year. The coast we are insuring, building beside and planning around is not the coast we have. It is the coast we used to have.

Wellington City Council's coastal adaptation plan, due for consultation later this year, has been characterised in some quarters as too cautious and in others as too radical. The truth is that it is — at best — a starting point.

The work ahead is not technical. It is political. It will require asking which sections of the south coast we keep building on, which we manage in place, and where, eventually, we retreat. None of those conversations are comfortable. All of them are now overdue.

Tuesday was not an aberration. It was a rehearsal. The question is whether the next time the sea comes for the south coast, the city is reading from a script — or improvising in the dark.