A Napier 10-year-old videoing a storm captured the moment a lightning bolt erupted right outside her Poraiti home. Video / Leah Te Whata
There's nothing better than a bit of "Sky TV" out the window.
A 10-year-old Napier girl with a camera was among the thousands watching as a dramatic storm engulfed Hawke's Bay's twin cities on Friday afternoon, bringing torrential rain and hail, and even the start of a small tornado.
A severe thunderstorm arrived on Friday, leaving flooding in Edmundson Street in Onekawa. Photo / Ian Cooper
ForLeah Te Whata the highlight was the lightning, specifically one almighty bolt that leapt up off a Poraiti Rd vector with a crack just as she began filming.
The severe thunderstorm brought heavy downpours of 16.8mm in 10 minutes in Napier, flash flooding some Onekawa and Taradale streets.
MetService recorded a total of 2000 lightning strikes as temperatures dropped from 17 degrees Celsius to 9C in 20 minutes.
Fire and Emergency services responded to a handful of calls regarding the storm, with several reports of flooding across Napier about 4pm on Friday.
Fork lightning strikes Poraiti. Photo / Leah Te Whata
A Fire and Emergency New Zealand spokesman in Wellington put the reports of flooding inside buildings down to "gutterings not being able to handle it".
Another of those with her phone at the ready was Napier resident Chloe Foster, who captured a time-lapse of the thundery sky while she took her kids through their evening bath, dinner and bedtime routine.
Storm rolls into Sanders Avenue in Marewa. Photo / Melissa Kauri
Foster's son Dylan, who has just turned three years old, loves a good thunderstorm and created his own home cinema out of the storm's theatrics.
"I was already getting Dylan's bath ready when the storm was coming in. So I set my phone up on the windowsill to record a time-lapse and got him in the bath.
Chloe Foster turned off the lights and watched the storm with her three-year-old son Dylan. Photo / Chloe Foster
"He asked me to turn all the lights off so we could watch the lightning and we were counting the seconds until the thunder came. My phone stopped recording when we had some really big thunder that shook the house and my phone fell over," Foster said.
