Another cyclone cooking up rain in time for Easter
Already flood-ravaged parts of the North Island may be in for another dose of heavy rain as the remnants of tropical Cyclone Cook arrive later this week.
Cook is now a category 3 storm and made landfall in New Caledonia last night, WeatherWatch.co.nz said.
Sustained winds of 200km/h with much higher gusts were expected for the French island nation.
WeatherWatch forecasts that by tonight Cook will be drifting south to southeast away from New Caledonia and slowly towards New Zealand.
MetService meteorologist Claire Flynn said the remnants of the cyclone were expected to pass by the northeast of New Zealand on Thursday and move away on Friday.
She said it was likely heavy rain would hit Bay of Plenty and Coromandel. However, she cautioned about the uncertainty of predicting cyclone weather patterns, particularly more than a few days out.
WeatherWatch.co.nz said Cook was a “very intense but small-sized storm”.
The weather forecaster also had concerns with a larger-sized low in the Tasman Sea joining forces with Cook to drag more flooding tropical rains to the North Island.
“This set-up could see rain returning to flooded parts of Bay of Plenty, for example, this Wednesday then intensifying as ex-cyclone Cook passes by over Thursday and Friday with torrential rain around eastern parts of the North Island; rain heavy enough to cause even further slips and flooding as possibly more than a month’s worth of rain yet again falls in just a couple of days,” it said.
“As for the four-day Easter weekend, it doesn’t look stormy so much as it looks unsettled for many regions.”
Flynn was not overly concerned with the low joining forces with Cook, expecting the low to remain just west of the South Island. For the latest weather forecasts go to nzherald.co.nz