Heavy rain and thunderstorms have kept the northern half of the Gisborne district under an orange severe weather warning through Friday, with Civil Defence telling people to clear their drains, stay out of low-lying ground and expect rivers to come up fast.
MetService reissued the warning at 9.17am on Friday 14 August, covering Gisborne and Tairāwhiti, the wider East Coast region, north of Tolaga Bay for 11 hours from 9am until 8pm. On top of the rain that had already fallen overnight, the forecaster expected another 60 to 70 millimetres in some places, with peak rates of 10 to 25 millimetres an hour in possible thunderstorms. It put only a minimal chance on the warning being lifted to red, the highest level in the system.
The warning text is blunt about what that looks like on the ground. Streams and rivers may rise rapidly, MetService said, with surface flooding, slips and difficult driving conditions all possible. The action advice attached to the warning, supplied by the National Emergency Management Agency, tells people to clear drains and gutters, avoid low-lying areas and drive cautiously.
By mid-morning the rain was already falling hard in the hills. RNZ reported that MetService had recorded up to 10 millimetres an hour in the northern ranges and 8 millimetres around East Cape, with the worst of the weather forecast for the rest of the morning and the afternoon. A severe thunderstorm warning had been issued earlier for the Far North, bringing the risk of torrential rain, and had been lifted by late morning.
The event has been building since Thursday. MetService first put the warning in place for 22 hours from 10pm Thursday, forecasting 90 to 120 millimetres, and Tairāwhiti Civil Defence went out early asking people to get ready rather than wait. “You know the drill folks, streams and rivers may rise rapidly. Surface flooding, slips, and difficult driving conditions possible,” it said in advice reported on Thursday. On Friday morning the region’s emergency management website was still carrying the orange warning as its only active alert, and nothing more serious.
Behind it all is a low pressure centre that drifted in from the Tasman Sea and then stalled, parking persistent rain over the north-eastern corner of the North Island for days. The Bay of Plenty took the first hit. A heavy rain warning covered the area west of Kawerau until 3pm Thursday, with a watch for the area east of Kawerau running from 2pm Thursday through to 9am Friday. Tauranga had its wettest day of the month so far, and some MetService stations in the Bay recorded more than 50 millimetres in the 12 hours to 11am Thursday.
Auckland had a completely different weather problem on the same morning. Fog restrictions came into force at Auckland Airport, and by 7.20am several domestic regional flights had been cancelled along with some arrivals, while other departures and arrivals were running late. A main trunk service to Christchurch was delayed, as was an arrival from Dunedin. International flights were not affected. The airport asked passengers to check its website rather than turn up and hope.
The rain is not finished with the East Coast either, it is just moving south. MetService’s severe weather outlook, issued at 10.42am on Friday, has the low sliding away east of the North Island over the weekend and leaving a strong southerly behind it. For Sunday the forecaster has moderate confidence that rainfall will meet warning criteria over the Wairoa District and the part of Gisborne and Tairāwhiti south of Gisborne city, with the same call again for Monday morning. There is a lower chance of severe south-easterly gales for the ranges of northern Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, and about the eastern Bay of Plenty. From Tuesday a ridge of high pressure builds over the country and the severe weather risk drops away to minimal.
None of this is unusual for the region, which is exactly the problem. Tairāwhiti Emergency Management describes flooding as the most frequent hazard the district faces, and says at least one severe storm causing flooding can be expected in any year. Most of those events do not reach houses, but they chew through crops, farm fences and the roading network, and low-lying roads flood, wash out and drop out. The bigger ones are rarer and land much harder. The earliest significant flood on the region’s record is June 1894, when 172 millimetres of rain caused widespread flooding. In June 1977 a state of emergency followed 218 millimetres over three days at Gisborne Airport, with 444 millimetres reported inland at Glenroy Station, Wainui Road impassable and houses evacuated on Fergusson Drive. Cyclone Bola in March 1988 dumped around 900 millimetres at Tauwhareparae and breached the Waipaoa stopbanks. Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 is the one still shaping the district today.
That history is why the advice on a day like Friday is so practical. Gisborne District Council’s civil defence guidance asks households to be able to cope on their own for at least five days, with a grab bag, food, a way of getting water, a torch and a battery or wind-up radio. The council runs a 24 hour customer service line on 0800 653 800 for reporting problems, publishes river levels, river cameras and rainfall data online, and asks people to report the early signs of a slip near their home, things like small rock falls, sinking ground at the bottom of a slope, doors and windows that suddenly stick, or decks pulling away from the house.
The gap between preparing for storms and repairing after them is a live argument in New Zealand right now. Earlier this week the Climate Change Commission reported that just 3 percent of hazard spending goes on preventing damage rather than cleaning it up, a ratio that regions like this one feel more than most.
Are you in the Gisborne district or the Bay of Plenty and watching the water come up? Tell us what conditions are like where you are in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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