Spectacular storm lights up Bay of Plenty skies

Lightning over Tauranga. Photo / Rebecca Morgan

The skies over Tauranga came alive last night as a storm flurried over the region, bringing roars of thunder and flashes of lightning and Metservice warns the stormy weather is set to continue today.

Metservice predicts scattered thunderstorms will hit throughout the central North Island before dying away this evening.

Metservice meteorologist Tui McInnes said significant thunderstorms had hit the length of the North Island in the last 24 hours and the activity had began yesterday morning.

Between 9am on Friday and 9am today, there were 33,218 lightning strikes across the country.

27,000 of those strikes were over the North Island.

In Tauranga, the storm came from a concentrated formation over the Kaimai Ranges.

Wow that lightening is intense!

Posted by Bay of Plenty Times on Friday, 14 December 2018

The peak hit on Friday in the late evening and continued into the early hours of this morning. As it moved north-east, the storm spread out and became less intense.

Metservice recorded some heavier showers yesterday evening in Tauranga, with rainfall measuring around 10 to 15mm in an hour.

The risk of flooding rose when rainfall reached 25mm.

It is hard to predict whether there would be more lightning strikes in the coming days as there are multiple factors involved in the phenomenon, McInnes said.

A Fire and Emergency New Zealand representative said there were no call-outs in Tauranga regarding the storms.