Blue sky a brief respite before rain

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

A brief window of blue sky opened over the district yesterday, but  then MetService arrived with a bucket of cold water in the shape of another rain forecast.

As earlier indicated, a south-east flow has developed over the North Island, and an associated trough will move over the Gisborne-East Coast region tomorrow and Sunday.

MetService has issued a heavy rain watch for this district and Hawke’s Bay, covering the period from midnight Friday to 6am Sunday morning.

The agency says there will be periods of heavy rain and amounts may approach warning criteria.

“Tairāwhiti/Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay are both still in recovery mode, so this spell of heavy rain could cause issues,” said MetService meteorologist Andrew James.

“There’s still a bit to happen before the weekend and we will update/upgrade those watches as the event unfolds, so stay up to date with the severe weather information from our team at MetService.”

Meanwhile, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) has confirmed that it was a warm May, with many places recording record, or near record temperatures.

Niwa says May was New Zealand’s warmest May on record since 1909, with an incredible anomaly of two degrees above the long-term (1991-2020) average.

As The Gisborne Herald earlier indicated, the daytime highs for May were 1.4 degrees above average, while night temperatures were 1.9 degrees above average.

The daily mean temperature for Gisborne over May ended up at 14.4 degrees . . .  and according to data collected at Gisborne airport since 1937, it was our second warmest May in 86 years.

Only twice in that period has the mean temperature for May been over the 14 degree mark.

The first time was with a 14-degree mean in May 1956. The second time was in 2011, which set the record for the warmest May in Gisborne at a mean daily temperature of 14.7 degrees.