Twister touches down
A ‘‘massive’’ tornado that swirled over farmland east of Hamilton left observers stunned and sent one woman to hunker down in the toilet.
Meanwhile motorists in Tauranga saw a giant tornado swirling above the harbour and threatening to touch down near the port’s tank farm.
Shiela Flor was attempting to settle her six-month-old daughter at her home on a farm near Waikato University when she heard a strange noise about midday.
She went to the window of the two-bedroom cottage on Holland Rd to see everything ‘‘blowing’’.
‘‘When I looked out the window there was something forming, like a twister,’’ she said shortly after the drama.
‘‘Everything was flying – rubbish, a silage cover, parts of the barn from the boss’s house.’’
Flor was so worried about the trampoline coming through the window she hid in the toilet.
‘‘I was getting a bit scared as I didn’t know if it was a tornado or twister, but it was strong.’’
The trampoline which typically sits next to the clothes line at the back door was lifted over a tree and tossed about 10-15 metres into the nearby paddock, she said.
‘‘Everything is in the paddock – our clothes, a slide, branches, pillows.’’
A carpet doormat from the front door ended up wedged in a tree.
In two to three minutes the gust was over, she said.
Dairy Farm owner Rebecca Davidson said she heard the tornado before she saw it. ‘‘It was like a roaring sound different to when you hear the wind,’’ Davidson said.
It appeared to start in the maize paddock about 200 metres from Davidson’s house. ‘‘Then I saw the dust, and the stuff in the skip being lifted out and the pallets were also lifted up and sheets of iron.’’
Davidson said it was like a sheet of black dirt coming straight towards the house. ‘‘I hid in the hallway, I was worried about the roof coming off and the windows blowing in.’’
The tornado lifted up a netball hoop and stand and tore iron off the garage. ‘‘It appeared to hit the railway line at the front of the farm and disperse.’’
Meanwhile, Sheryl Barlow of Morrinsville was travelling to Hamilton with her husband Ron when they spotted what looked like a tornado near Eureka, east of Hamilton, on State Highway 26.
‘‘We saw this whirlwind kind of thing, with a dark grey almost black tail,’’ she said.
‘‘My husband was like what’s that funny line in the cloud? And I was like that’s not a line, honey, that’s a tornado.’’
She whipped out her phone to video the twister. A mass of dark debris surrounded the funnel shape, although she couldn’t see any damage.
‘‘I’ve never seen anything like that.’’
Nearby, Roddy Finlayson was undertaking earthworks on Telephone Rd in Puketaha when his boss in a nearby digger yelled out to ‘‘stop’’.
‘‘He said check that out.’’
In the distance Finlayson caught sight of a funnel cloud swirling across the horizon.
‘‘It was the size of it. It was massive, growing and heading in our direction. I’ve seen water spouts before but nothing of that size. It started off small then got larger in diameter.’’
Finlayson and his boss watched on as the twister’s base got bigger, and darker grey in colour.
‘‘We were wondering how long it was going to keep going for. Then it started phasing out, working its way from the bottom back up to the clouds, getting shorter and shorter.’’
Once the tornado blew out, it rained for two minutes, then everything went still, Barlow said.
MetService forecaster Cameron Coutts said it looked like a tornado. It was hard to say how big it was, he said.