Otumoetai resident Megan Lacy describes seeing a trampoline fly over roofs and fences before crash-landing into a neighbour's roof.
A trampoline took flight and floated over three properties before crash-landing into the roof of a house 50m away this afternoon, leaving a Tauranga neighbourhood stunned and a meteorologist puzzled.
Megan Lacy and her daughter Georgia, 16, could only say "oh my God" as the trampoline hovered - spinning rapidly,metres in the air - in front of the first-storey deck of their Grange Rd home in Otumoetai.
"It was like a UFO, just sort of coming towards us like it was possessed," Megan said.
"It was just the oddest, funniest thing," she said of the trampoline's 30-second flight.
Megan Lacy said the trampoline hovered at eye-level as she watched from her deck.
Shortly after 1pm, the pair had been on the deck enjoying another day of sunshine and light summer breezes when they saw the "once in a lifetime" sight.
The circular trampoline, about 3m wide with tall safety netting, took flight from the front yard of a property the next street over.
"It just lifted up and sort of hovered," Megan said.
"There was no wind and all of a sudden there's this trampoline coming towards us, spinning - and it's not a small trampoline."
The trampoline hovered over neighbour Trisha's wide back lawn for a few beats before suddenly taking off in nearly the opposite direction and crashing into the roof of Jenny Hansen's house on Parkvale Rd.
The flying trampoline left dents and scratches when it crash-landed into Jenny Hansen's roof. Photo/Matt Hansen
Jenny had just arrived at Countdown when Megan called to say a flying trampoline had hit her roof and bounced into her front yard.
She went straight home to find it upside down on top of her barbecue.
Her son Matt Hansen helped her tip the trampoline - undamaged apart from a new diagonal slant - on to its feet on her lawn.
Matt checked the galvanised iron roof of the house and found dents and scrapes showing the trampoline's path.
Jenny had no idea how they were going to get the thing out of her high-hedged yard and back to its suspected home - across the street and three doors down.
Jenny Hansen was not sure how she would get the huge trampoline out of her high-fenced yard. Photo/Megan Lacy
She thought their best bet would be to disassemble it so it could fit through the gates.
A neighbour of the family thought to own the trampoline - who were not home - said she had heard the wind whistling down between their houses and saw the trampoline lift up.
The woman, who would not give her name, dashed outside thinking she would find it tipped over the fence. But it had disappeared.
She said it was like it was in a little "mini tornado" had picked the trampoline up, but a severe weather expert said that was definitely not the case.
Metservice meteorologist Heath Gullery said Tauranga was experiencing none of the conditions necessary to create a tornado.
He could not explain what happened except to say a gust of wind must have caught the trampoline .
"It's a bit puzzling."
The trampoline's path during its 30-second flight.
