Flash floods as heavy rain hammers central North
Deluge dumps more than 33mm in an hour in Rotorua
An intense rain band which swept across central North Island yesterday caused flash flooding in Rotorua and Tauranga. Fire and Emergency NZ had received more than 20 calls last night about flooding, northern shift manager Colin Underdown said.
“Starting about 6pm we had about a dozen calls from Rotorua, there’s heavy flooding there. I think it’s the same squall,” Underdown said.
Most of the Rotorua callouts were in Owhata. The city had a dumping of more than 33mm in an hour.
About 7.30pm the calls started in Tauranga as the “huge downpour” moved east, Underdown said.
“It all seems to be flooding into houses, garages, basements,” he said.
“We’re just helping divert the water away from the houses.
“We’ve still got five calls active at the moment but we’ve got three appliances [spare] — for a while we had a dozen calls queued up.”
Most Tauranga flooding callouts were in the 15th Ave to Greerton area, including a report of a roof having collapsed in Lloyd St, Parkvale.
Power was knocked out in Welcome Bay last night, affecting more than 1000 properties.
Police issued a warning to motorists in the Bay of Plenty to take extra care on the roads as surface flooding affected the region.
Heavy rain also hit Auckland and severe thunderstorms were forecast in the Far North late last night.
On the North Shore, a lightning strike brought powerlines down on to a road in Wairau Valley, in Hillcrest. Emergency services rushed to the scene on Wairau Rd. The road was closed for several hours but reopened to motorists last evening.
Earlier yesterday NiwaWeather warned of cloud-to-ground lightning from near Waihi Beach down to Tauranga. The intense lightning was also striking around Whangamata.
MetService warned of hail and dangerous driving conditions across parts of the North Island as a front from the South Island caused temp- eratures to plunge by as much as 10C.
The east of the South Island and the Wellington region was also a lot cooler than it had been over the weekend.
The hotspot yesterday was in the Bay of Islands, where temperatures hit around 27C. Down south, Invercargill shivered in 13C temperatures.
The system was expected to move quickly, and rain was unlikely to bring any drought relief, except in localised areas affected by thunderstorms.
Later this week more fronts will bring rainfall to the southwest and cause temperatures to “yoyo”, MetService said.
Christchurch was forecast to bounce from 19C yesterday to 26C today, 19C tomorrow and 29C on Thursday. “As fronts make inroads on to New Zealand we can expect more variable weather conditions,” meteorologist Tom Adams said.
“The biggest fluctuations between cool and hot, wet and dry will be in the south,” he said.
“Further north the fronts will have weakened, but we still expect the coming weather to be more changeable than during the last few weeks.
“With the holidays approaching and people starting to make outdoor plans, it is worth remembering that the weather does change, and it always pays to keep an eye on the latest forecasts. Don’t take fine weather for granted.”