Hawke's Bay's 'big dry': Thunder and lightning, but not a lot of rain

Lee Miller snapped this shot of a Central Hawke's Bay thunderstorm at the weekend.

A bit of rain and even weekend thunderstorms came a little too late for organisers for one of Hawke's Bay's historic sheep dog trials which has had to be cancelled because of the dry summer.

The Patoka trials, the sixth of the 13 trials scheduled to be staged by clubs in the Hawke's Bay Sheep Dog Trial Centre season from the end of January to late April, were to have been held on March 6-7.

The trials had also been cancelled in 2018, but attracted record entries the following year, and could have expected farmers and shepherds with over 170 dogs.

New centre president Bruce D'Ath, who recorded about 20mm of rain at Mangakuri Station, near the coast south of Cape Kidnappers, said he understood sheep staggers had been the problem in the extended hot and dry weather, with grass disappearing from the paddocks.

"There's a bit of cattle feed," he said. "But there's not a lot for the sheep."

Facial eczema was also a looming problem with rain following the hot weather.

A forecaster with MetService said brief and sporadic thunderstorms on Saturday may have looked "spectacular" to some people, but they brought little rain.

Among the most significant rainfall was a weekend total of 13.6mm at a Te Pohue recording station, north of Patoka.

The conditions were more common towards inland ranges, from Napier to the southeast and in Central Hawke's Bay.

More thunder and lightning this week was considered unlikely, although small amounts of rain up to about 10mm were probable in some areas, along with two to three days of cloudy skies.

Some cooler times on Sunday and Monday were a sign of things to come at night and early mornings ahead of the March 1 meteorological change from summer to autumn.

But forecasts of up to temperatures up to 30C were still in place for next weekend.