MetService believes one or more tornadoes touched down across Tauranga early today, as powerful wind gusts brought significant damage to homes across Bay of Plenty.
“That looks like a tornado, or possibly multiple small tornadoes through the broader Tauranga around 1.30am,” MetService meteorologist John Crouch said after assessing the evidence.
“There could be more damage areas based on the radar. Tornado(es) were associated with a thunderstorm moving through the area,” Crouch said.
He believes the tornado or tornadoes probably developed over the harbour (or Matakana Island) west of Tauranga and moved east-southeast over parts of Tauranga, Maungatapu and Welcome Bay.
“There may have been more than one touching down along the path.”
Maungatapu resident Hotu Frew says she is facing the prospect of losing her home after it suffered severe damage.
“The house shook a little bit and I heard the first lot of smashing of windows about 1.30 this morning. I jumped up, grabbed the kids, got the kids up, and then as we went into the kitchen, noticed that all the sunroom was completely gone and, just windows smashed everywhere.”
She and her children sought refuge in another part of the house until the storm passed.
“I packed the kids in the car and then took them over to their dad’s and then came back and at that point, I didn’t see the tornado, I just saw the aftermath of it,” Frew said.
She says she spoke to a neighbour this morning who believed they had seen a tornado.
Frew called the fire brigade at about 5am.
“They came in and have said that they’ll let the council stabilise the roof, and they’ve let the council know and it’ll either be yellow-stickered or red-stickered.
“We’re just waiting for a container to turn up now because if it’s yellowed or red-stickered then I won’t be allowed back in the house to get anything. So we’re trying to work fast,” Frew said.
Residents of Welcome Bay near Tauranga are this morning without power as they also face a day of cleaning up.
Cory Moss was asleep in his cabin on Corinna St when the tornado struck. It was strong enough to lift the structure off its foundations and into a car.
“Woke up and just got thrown around. We looked out the door and see the car was at the door. Grabbed my dog and climbed out the door and upstairs,” said Moss.
The cabin is on a property owned by his father, Graham - the main house also suffered damage.
“The whole roof is gone,” said Graham Moss.
Parts of it were scattered across neighbouring properties.
Fellow Welcome Bay resident Adam Ron says he and his wife were woken shortly before 2am.
“Heard a big sound, there was lots of lightning flashes, the rain was very, very heavy. Looked out the window at the trampoline as we usually do and the trampoline’s gone,” he said.
Ron estimates the weather event lasted 10-15 minutes.
“It was raining pretty hard for that duration and then just after that it was complete silence.”
This morning power is out to 75 homes in Welcome Bay, according to lines company PowerCo which has listed the cause of the outage at about 1.27am as “tornado”.
Data that MetService has available shows wind gusts of 100km/h and higher through parts of Coromandel at around 1am and 74km/h at Tauranga Airport – which also saw 27mm of rain between 11pm and 6am.
MetService says there was a significant number of lightning strikes too - but don’t yet have accurate figures.
Ron told the Herald his neighbours’ shelter belt has been left strewn across the road blocking their passage towards Tauranga. He believes “big machinery” will be required to make the road passable again.
“Probably 20 trees or so fell down, and then on the other side of the road there’s more, property damage. People with sections of roofs off and a few broken windows and that kind of thing.”