Heavy rain causes slip

Heavy rain warnings are in place for northern Hawke's Bay today, after an unusually wet start to July caused a large slip on Napier Hill and surface flooding throughout the province.

A slip on Hooker Avenue about 5pm yesterday - which brought down scrub and vegetation from the hillside - came on the back of a solid 24 hours of rain that also saw heavy surface flooding in the Hastings suburb of Camberley.

Police in Napier and Hastings said there were no other reports of slips or traffic problems despite surface flooding on roads in Central Hawke's Bay.

The MetService said a lingering low pressure system over the East Coast could also see areas south of Wairoa reach heavy rain warning status today.

It advised people to keep up to date with the latest forecasts.

The sudden deluge came after the news that rainfall in Hawke's Bay last month was less than half of normal June averages - with Wairoa getting its third-driest June on record.

The "unusual" parched conditions were accompanied by more sunshine hours than usual and the highest temperature for the country was 22.0 C in Wairoa, Niwa's monthly climate summary showed.

"It was an unusually dry June in the north and east of the North Island," the summary said. "Rainfall totals in Northland, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hawke's Bay and South Canterbury were less than half of June normal."

Despite the lack of rainfall, temperatures and soil moisture levels remained near average.

Joining Wairoa in the record-breaking stakes, Mahia reached its second-highest June temperature on record since 1990, at 19.6C on June 6.

The highest temperature in New Zealand was 22.0 C, observed at Wairoa on June 6.

Hawke's Bay also stayed within 0.5C of the national temperature average of 7.8C, with above normal sunshine totals (between 110 and 124 per cent of June normal).

Weather in the rest of the country was characterised by icy temperatures and snowfall in the South Island, with the white stuff closing SH1 at the Napier-Taupo Rd on June 16, and the Napier to Taihape Road was closed overnight on June 28.