Weather: Hawke’s Bay unable to escape showers and thunder in summer

Storms rolling in over Hawke's Bay on Saturday afternoon, as seen from Te Mata. Photo / Ian Cooper

The summer season does not mean long stretches of sunny days for Hawke’s Bay yet, with a weekend full of thunder and showers expected to linger a little bit longer at least.

MetService meteorologist Alwyn Bakker said there is currently a stationary front from northern Auckland down to Hawke’s Bay, which has brought wet weather and thunder to the region.

“Hastings on Saturday got about 15mm of rain in the one hour leading up to 3pm, that kind of thing is associated with thunderstorms, where you get a very brief period of heavy rain.”

Bakker said the weather is expected to calm down a bit from its thunderous peak on Saturday.

“Monday is looking reasonably okay, there might be a few showers in the south of the region, but generally it is pretty nice elsewhere,” he said.

“At this stage, we are expecting Tuesday and Wednesday to be a bit damp.”

Bakker said it could be challenging to say exactly where it will be getting the rain in very showery conditions, so at this stage he couldn’t pinpoint just where in the region it would shower during the week.

He said the front meant affected areas were getting a lot of tropical air, leading to humid conditions.

He said it would get a bit less muggy on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, with high temperatures in the low 20s for Napier and Hastings.

Bakker said that the summer season did not necessarily mean warmer and sunnier weather immediately as many might think.

“Because we are a maritime climate, there is a bit of a lag going on so it does take us that little bit longer to actually get those nice warm temperatures and sunny days because the ocean takes a long time to heat up.”