Prospects of a drought in Hawke's Bay loomed further as temperatures soared above 30C at the weekend with a Metservice meteorologist warning there's "not a lot of sign of precipitation".
The maximum official temperature recorded by the national weather agency in Hawke's Bay during the weekend was 30.4C at Hawke's Bay Airport on Saturday afternoon, stifling for some but well short of the hottest December temperature for Napier in the last 20 years — 34.4C in December 2000.
But it was equal to the peak of December last year, 30.4C in Hastings three days before last Christmas, and similar to the peak of December 2015, also three days before Christmas.
However, the weekend's temperature peak in Napier was the hottest recorded in the North Island on Saturday, but just the fourth-hottest nationwide.
The maximum of 31.8C was recorded at Cooptown in the heart of Bank's Peninsula, the next-highest being 31C at Christchurch Airport and 30.5C in Ashburton.