Wet, wild and stormy few days
Wellingtonians shouldn’t hold their breath for the return of fine weather, with rain expected to lash the capital over the weekend.
The thunderstorms that lit up the city’s skyline in the early hours of yesterday have now cleared, but MetService is warning the weekend will be wet.
Meteorologist Lisa Murray, from MetService, said there would be a reprieve for the next two days, before the next downpour.
Today was expected to be cloudy, with the northern suburbs bearing the brunt of some gales.
Tomorrow’s forecast is mainly fine, with a large low sitting across the central North Island starting to brew in the evening.
The low pressure system was expected to bring ‘‘significant’’ weather to the capital come Saturday, Murray said.
‘‘Saturday won’t be fine, there will be morning rain with possible thunderstorms.’’
Yesterday’s thunderous clouds had cleared by early evening, making way for a picturesque sunset over the waterfront.
‘‘Any remaining showers have cleared up. We had a beautiful sunset over the harbour,’’ Murray said.
‘‘There is some rain in the Tararuas, but that is going to clear shortly. We will have a fine evening with some northwest winds.’’
Yesterday’s storm saw electricity cut off to nearly 20,000 homes after lightning hit Transpower’s transmission line in Gracefield, Lower Hutt.
The outage happened at 7.36am, but power was restored to 18,274 homes at 7.55am, spokeswoman Rebecca Wilson said.
As of 7pm, Wellington Electricity had restored power to all houses in the region.
The storm saw 2568 lightning strikes around the country in the 12 hours to 11am, MetService meteorologist Arno Dyason said.
They gave off a total energy of 52,444 kiloamperes (kA) – enough to power 63 million 100-watt lightbulbs.