Heavy rain on way for upper South Island
Auckland is in line for more severe storms this afternoon, and there is now a slew of weather warnings in place for the top half of the South Island.
The city was hit by a severe overnight thunderstorm which caused flooding in many areas.
It prompted Auckland Emergency Management to open a Civil Defence centre in Three Kings, and led to hundreds of flooding-related callouts for emergency services.
MetService this afternoon said there was still plenty of bite left in ex-Tropical Cyclone Tam, the cause of the wild weather.
⚠️A line of Severe Thunderstorms is bringing very heavy rain to western parts of Auckland - indicated by the Red Thunderstorm Warning area
See
https://t.co/qHyE5zzql5
areas likely to be affected
The Yellow Watch indicates a risk until 6pm this evening
pic.twitter.com/6yu921Bzum
— MetService (@MetService)
April 19, 2025
The forecaster early this afternoon said the worst had passed but then had to backtrack as it issued a new severe thunderstorm warning for Auckland city, Waitakere, Franklin, Rodney and Albany, saying the storms were expected to be accompanied by torrential rain.
A storm watch was for a wider area of the city was in place until 6pm today
Meteorologist Alec Holden said said there was now a raft of heavy rain warnings for the top half of the South Island, as the middle of the storm drew close to central New Zealand.
"We have this really annoying high-pressure system that's to the south-east of the country, which is preventing the cyclone from passing over us and away," Holden said.
🌦️⛈️ Weather warnings and watches Update⚡⛈️
🌧️ Heavy rain continues across parts of New Zealand!
Some areas will see downpours through Sunday, while others may not catch a break until Monday. Stay safe, stay dry, and keep an eye on the forecast at
https://t.co/qHyE5zzql5
pic.twitter.com/612TTIFSKy
— MetService (@MetService)
April 18, 2025
"So, it just means that it's just been kept here spinning without anywhere to really go. So, it's been bringing all these showers and thunderstorms over the country.
"Looking a little bit forward into the future that high pressure system doesn't really break down and move away until the end of the long weekend.
"So it does look like many people are still [going to] have showers in their futures until the start of the working week being Tuesday."
Heavy rain in Auckland overnight.
An arm of unstable rain moved over Auckland, resulting in a conga line of thunderstorms drenching Albany through to Mt Roskill. There were also around 750 lightning strikes over the event.
pic.twitter.com/wlf2NtCCbC
— MetService (@MetService)
April 18, 2025
Earlier, MetService meterologist Alain Baillie said 26.5 millimetres of rain was recorded at Mahurangi, in northern Auckland, between 10pm and 11pm on Friday.
About 21 millimetres was recorded at Whenuapai Airport in the hour leading to midnight.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) said it received hundreds of calls for help in Auckland overnight, due to the storm
Between 11:30pm Friday and 4am Saturday there were 223 weather-related calls asking for firefighters' help, Fenz told RNZ.
Two of the incidents involved water rescues, with people trapped in their cars by floodwaters: one in Wesley and one in Onehunga.
Auckland Emergency Management general manager Adam Maggs said there had been no reports of injuries, and only a few reports of floodwaters getting properly inside houses.
"Infrastructure wise, pretty much everything's operational as normal and can be dealt with in a BAU (business as usual) sort of capacity," he told RNZ.
"There's mainly surface flooding, fairly localised, because with thunderstorms you tend to get downpours and they're in a quite a sort of a refined area. So around the Onehunga area, around Mount Roskill, we've definitely seen road flooding and we've recommended people to not drive through floodwaters.
"We've had some cars stall in the water, so (Fenz) had to get those vehicles removed ... we had some alarms being triggered because of, you know, the rain-related flooding, and we've also had a few garages flooded.
"We've only had a couple indications of a dwelling having some carpet wet."
The downpours come off the back of days of wild weather following ex-Cyclone Tam, which left thousands without power and damaged roads and other infrastructure.