Can you spot the difference?
Tuesday’s thunderstorm dumped record amounts of December rain across the Waikato and Auckland regions, while lightning strikes killed cows at Te Kowhai and injured a woman in Mangere.
Here the storm moved straight over much of the region — lightning strikes and accompanying thunder were right overhead in Te Awamutu.
On the eastern side of town the strikes were alarmingly close to Alan and Bev Empson’s home, and even closer to their worker’s cottage.
One strike hit and split a 150-year-old redwood tree about 100 metres from the house, and just 50m from the cottage.
Alan had recently taken a photo of the view from the house, which shows the tree intact. A corresponding image taken Tuesday afternoon shows the tree was split clean in half.
He said the whole house shook when the lightning struck and wood from the tree flew 50m in all directions. One of the larger pieces took down power lines on their property.