Hawke’s Bay: Calm before the storm or a normal summer’s return?

Warm temperatures, the first over 30deg in Hawke's Bay for a year, brought people out at Sandy Beach, Ahuriri. Photo / Warren Buckland.

Hawke’s Bay is holding its breath with the rest of the North Island as meteorologists watch a tropical cyclone forming in the Coral Sea, uncertain where exactly it will hit worst.

But in the meantime it’s more or less ‘normal transmission has resumed’, with Hastings posting Wednesday’s hottest temperature nationwide - 29.5deg about 5pm, with inner-city Napier at 29.4deg.

It was a week which saw the first temperatures over 30deg in a year which has so far included record-breaking January rainfalls and above-average rainfall in the region for six months in a row.

Late on Wednesday, Metservice was still forecasting mainly fine weather for Hawke’s Bay for at least four days before likely rain early next week.

The high came in a week where MetService stations on Monday posted Hawke’s Bay’s first temperatures over 30deg in a year.

However, it wasn’t quite so warm on Wednesday elsewhere in Hawke’s Bay, ranging from Wairoa’s peak of about 26deg to the central and southern Hawke’s Bay peaks of about 22deg.

The Herald reported earlier that international weather modellers expecting what the Australia Bureau of Meteorology identifies as tropical storm Gabrielle, to hit New Zealand shores from Sunday, with the cyclone’s centre passing directly over the top of the North Island.

Metservice had no severe weather warnings in place on Wednesday, and a “severe weather outlook” for longer-term possibilities was that there was a low “confidence” for heavy rain in the region next week.

Metservice meteorologist Andrew James said there was still “some time” between when the cyclone was forming and when it would hit New Zealand and, given the distance in between, a lot could happen in that time.

“People ought to make the most out of the settled weather,” he said.

Hawke’s Bay saw four times average January rainfall last month, with Dr Kathleen Kozyniak, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council team leader for marine air and land science, saying there were record-breaking January totals for most of the council’s sites, “apart from those located north of Tangoio.” .

“The region has now notched up six consecutive months of above-average rainfall,” she says.