Australian heatwave set to cook Hawke’s Bay

A fire at Tangoio in January 2020, at the time of a devastating heatwave and bushfires in Australia. The hottest temperature in Hawke's Bay that month was 36.3C in Wairoa. Photo / NZME

Firefighters in Hawke’s Bay are preparing for the worst in a hot weather spike of temperatures as high as 37C and strong northwesterlies.

A byproduct of a heatwave bringing temperatures up to 45C across Australia, three days of temperatures over 30C are forecast for the Bay from Friday, with the peak under the influence of the northwesterlies expected on Sunday.

The 37C forecast for Hastings – a degree up on the first projections this week – could be the highest since January-February 2020, when Australian bushfires killed 30 people and Hawke’s Bay had a major fire near Tangoio.

Hawke’s Bay is in a prohibited fire season, with a ban on the lighting of fires in open spaces, and warnings have been made about the risk of ignition of dry vegetation from machinery and vehicles.

Regional assistant fire commander Jason Hall said the plans to cope with any emergency would include having helicopters on standby, but the target is prevention, with a responsibility for the public not to light any fires and to avoid doing “anything that sparks.”

He said people shouldn’t be “fooled” by the fact there has been recent rain, warning the extra green growth adds to the fuel.

Such spikes in fire danger as a result of weather conditions aren’t common in Hawke’s Bay, with just three last summer.

But he said they were usually just for one day, rather than the multiple days of risk emerging this week.

Temperatures in Hawke’s Bay have been hotter than usual, including Hastings having its hottest October and November days in at least 60 years, with 32.1C at the time of the Hawke’s Bay Show and about 33C late in the following month.

Climate agency Earth Sciences NZ (formerly Niwa) reckoned it had been the warmest spring in the region in more than a century.

The forecast was confirmed by MetService meteorologist Ngaire Wotherspoon, who said the winds were coming from Australia, where a heatwave has started, with forecasts of the hottest temperatures since those leading up to the bush-fire disasters of the 2019-20 summer.

The temperatures in parts of Australia, in a band from west to east, are forecast to hit as high as 45C, after last year proved to be Australia’s warmest year on meteorological record.

Wotherspoon said forecasts of temperatures in New Zealand into the mid-30s are “unusual” and come with an elevated fire risk.

The hottest temperature in New Zealand in January last year was 32.4C in Bay of Plenty town Kawerau, and in January 2024 the hottest was 35.1C in Hanmer Forest in the South Island, while Hastings recorded the hottest temperature in Hawke’s Bay with 33.6C.

Longer-range forecasts have daily maximum temperatures above 25C in Hawke’s Bay continuing next week, including for the Super Smash Twenty20 men’s and women’s double-headers with 2.10pm starts at Napier’s McLean Park, and heading into the big annual event in the northern area, the Wairoa A&P Show on January 16-17.

Temperatures today in Hawke’s Bay had hit 27C before 2pm.

Doug Laing is a Hawke’s Bay Today reporter based in Napier, with almost 53 years in the news game, covering most aspects of local and regional news.