Crews have already been working on clearing slips along State Highway 2, between Ōpōtiki and Gisborne.
Niwa principal scientist Chris Brandolino told The Front Page that we are getting a lot of tropical moisture.
“There’s a tropical low to our north over north and west of New Caledonia and the tropics, and that is going to move south.
“It’s disorganised, but what it has with it is a lot of moisture from the tropics. There’s a separate low over the Tasman Sea.
“So the two are going to work together to provide us with this really wet period.
“We’ve already seen the rain and wind, but that’s really going to increase and should reach its apex sometime during the day on Wednesday and perhaps even into early Thursday for some,” he said.
Brandolino said that places like the Coromandel, eastern Northland, Bay of Plenty, and Gisborne have the highest risk of some heavy rainfall.
“We’re talking 100 to maybe even 200ml of rain in a pretty short period of time.
“Northland had flooding over the weekend, so the concern there is that you already had flooding, now you’re going to get more rain.
“That could, unfortunately, be a situation where flooding occurs when normally it wouldn’t, simply because the ground is so wet,” he said.
Auckland Anniversary weekend looks like it’ll be one spent indoors, but Brandolino is convinced summer isn’t over just yet.
“We’re in mid-January here, so we still have a good 10 days before the end of January, and we have all of February.
“Here’s the good thing about being an island nation. We’re surrounded by water. Our ocean temperatures reach their highest typically in early to mid-February.
“Why is that a big deal? Because that helps to keep us warmer a bit longer. So as we go into March, our ocean temperatures are really quite warm still.
“March can often be an extension of summer. Yeah, the days are a bit shorter, but you can get some really warm temperatures still and some really nice weather,” he said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
- Areas most at risk
- Seasonal outlook
- La Niña influence
- Auckland Anniversary weekend outlook.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the NZ Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
