Hawke’s Bay north of Napier faces heavy rain watch, possible upgrade to warning

Gloomy weather is on its way to Hawke's Bay on Thursday and Friday. Photo / Warren Buckland

Pack your raincoat Hawke’s Bay, Thursday and Friday is looking wet.

MetService has issued a heavy rain watch for Hawke’s Bay north of Napier, which has a high chance of being upgraded to a warning.

MetService meteorologist Lewis Ferris said a fast-moving low-pressure system was currently moving eastwards over the northern half of the North Island.

“That crosses over as we hit midnight into Friday, that’s when we see the surface winds turn around to an onshore direction for that Hawke’s Bay Tairāwhiti region,” he said.

“That sort of pushes in what could be quite persistent heavy rain, overnight into Friday morning.”

Ferris said there were some differences in what the forecast models were telling him, making it hard to narrow down where the highest risk will be, hence why the watch had a high chance of being upgraded to a heavy rain warning.

“For context, the warning criteria for around 18 hours is about 80 millimetres of rain,” Ferris said.

Going through to the weekend, Ferris said there was an area of high pressure building, which would generally bring settled weather.

“It’s got a few flies in the ointment,” he said.

“But generally, high pressure lingers around our shores into next week.

“While people probably shouldn’t expect it to be absolutely perfect, it does look to be on a more settled sort of regime for a wee while.”

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier.