Clover growth after rain brightens up the day in central and southern Hawke's Bay

After months of dry and brown, grass starts to appear at Mangaorapa after more than 100mm of rain in five days. Photo / Paul van Beers

The clover is coming out in some of the Hawke's Bay drought's driest spots which have seen over 100mm of rain in the last week.

The heaviest rain or most consistent rain was in the coastal southeast around Porangahau, where there had been 110.5mm of rain in five days, according to Hawke's Bay Regional Council rainfall gauge network figures.

Paul van Beers, who farms about 750ha off Te Uri Rd in the Mangaorapa "basin", had on Friday seen rain for the first time in more than three weeks.

At the weekend he recorded successive one-day falls of about 20mm on Saturday and Sunday, and a comparative deluge of 70mm on Monday night, and said on Tuesday, with a small amount more in the gauge: "That extra 70-80mm has made a big difference. We're fine for the next 10 days or so."

"We'd recently put fertiliser on so we were a bit worried about what the rain would do," he said.

"But the clover leaf is coming up… just phenomenal really."

Further north into Central Hawke's Bay, across the Ruataniwha and Heretaunga Plains and the usually wetter areas towards the Ruahine and Kaweka ranges, the rainfall, generally under 20mm, was still "nowhere near enough", according to Federated Farmers Hawke's Bay provincial president Jim Galloway, on Wednesday in the tractor on the farm at Raukawa, where there had been about 14mm of rain.

He said a lot of farmers were working "really hard" at getting feed and water to stock.

He warned that amid the Covid-19 crisis farmers need to keep a watch on the servicing of their quadbikes and other vehicles clocking-up the kilometres on the farm, and to be aware that workshops providing the servicing would probably have delays because of the Covid-19 restrictions.

According to weather figures published in Hawke's Bay Today, Mahia had had 76.4mm of rain in March to 6pm on Tuesday, compared with a March average of 110.9mm.

Hawke's Bay Airport north of Napier had had 31.8mm (March average 63.2mm), Hastings had had 37.6mm (March average 75mm) and Takapau Plains had had 51mm (March average 87mm).

As of early Wednesday afternoon, MetService had no weather warnings in place.

The regional forecast for Thursday was for morning and evening cloud with coastal showers, otherwise fine spells, but cloudy with isolated showers north of Wairoa.

Friday was expected be mostly cloudy with occasional showers, again with southwesterlies turning southeasterly in the afternoon.

Maximum temperatures in the Napier-Hastings area were expected to remain around 20-21 degrees for the next week, but with possible showers on Friday and Saturday but fine weather into at least Wednesday next week.