Wild Waipukurau: Floods and thunder in CHB town
Week of weather ups and downs for CHB community
Hawke’s Bay endured a weather rollercoaster this week with fluctuating temperatures, humid conditions and even a bout of surface flooding.
The Central Hawke’s Bay town of Waipukurau was hit by flash surface flooding in its town centre on Thursday night as thunderstorms and very localised downpours lashed the area.
Rural Accountants Hawke’s Bay director Frans Els said it was a shock when the rain started about 3.30pm and stopped by 5.30pm, leaving surface flooding.
“They predicted it was going happen again an hour later, but luckily it didn’t.”
He said it was the first time he’d seen something like this happen in town.
“I think it was too much for the drains to take it away. It was just too quick.”
On Friday morning, neighbours pitched in to help clean up, manning brooms to help sweep away the water.
“We all just worked together to get the offices up and running properly, it was just full of water at the entrance. Across the road was even worse than by us.”
Central Hawke’s Bay District Council said on social media that the thunderstorm warning had lifted by 8.19pm, but advised people not to enter the Tukituki River from Waipukurau Wastewater Treatment Plant from Mt Herbert Rd downstream as a result of the heavy rain causing an overflow.
MetService meteorologist John Law said the event was not a weather bomb, but more a mix of climate conditions resulting in a heavy downpour and an intense thunderstorm.
“It would’ve been exactly the combination we’ve been thinking about for the last couple of days. Those high temperatures and that humidity plus a little bit of a mechanism to get that air moving upwards make the perfect combination for those systems to develop.
“You’ve got insulation in the atmosphere
so that air wants to rise. You’ve got the moisture there, which helps clouds build. As anyone in Hawke’s Bay will tell you, you can feel how much moisture there is in the air.”
The Hawke’s Bay Regional Council rainfall meter for Waipukurau recorded 33.8mm of rain on January 18.
Law said because of the rain’s localised nature, it was hard to pinpoint totals from the MetService data.
“Down towards Takapau plains, there was 3mm in an hour. There would have been quite localised showers, so you could get a big difference between one side of the street and the other.”
Rainfall was well above normal for Hawke's Bay in 2023 and Hawke's Bay was one of the regions that received at least 400 per cent of normal January and February rainfall.
The highest daily rainfall total from regularly reporting Niwa gauges excluding high elevation stations across the entire country in 2023 was 561mm at Tareha, near the Esk River, on February 13. Tutira had the thirdhighest rainfall recorded in that category nationally, with 316mm at Hurford Rd on February 13.
Hawke's Bay Today earlier reported a farm in Waiwhare, Hawke's Bay, independently recorded 730mm of rainfall during Cyclone Gabrielle, which at its peak unleashed 250mm of rain an hour. Of that, 643.6mm reportedly fell over 24 hours on February 14. Tutira, Hastings, Napier, Whakatu and Waipawa all recorded their highest-ever one-day February rainfall, due to Cyclone Gabrielle.
Waipawa had a record-high extreme one-day rainfall total of 117mm on February 13, the highest since records began in 1945.