The north’s wild weather has properly hit the Bay of Plenty and with it likely to linger holidaymakers have cut their plans short.
Campers and concertgoers alike have been impacted by the weather, which has been driven into the Bay of Plenty from further north.
In much of the North Island on Wednesday, campers packed up early and concerts were canned, including Tauranga’s A Summer’s Day Live.
While the worst began yesterday it was expected to continue over the next few days and weather warnings are in place. This included a heavy rain warning issued yesterday morning through until midnight tonight, with a chance of it being extended. This was for the Bay of Plenty west of Whakatāne and north of Rotorua.
MetService meteorologist Jessie Owens said winds were expected to ease gradually today, but gusts could still be strong.
Juicy Fest is set to go ahead today in Tauranga, and event promoter Glenn Meikle said while it was forecast to be “rain, rain, rain”, there were breaks, and the wind was more of an issue than rain. Anything above 50km/h became a problem, and gusts were sitting between 20km/h and 30km/h.
“We’ll give it a go ... at the end of the day, we’ll make sure it’s safe.”
Rain at concerts did not necessarily mean bad news, he said, as people partied on with raincoats and hats.
Over the next two days, things look to remain relatively unchanged.
In Tauranga, 70.8mm of rain was expected to fall yesterday, while a total of 19.1mm was expected in Rotorua.
For Rotorua camper David Cossar, the rain had proved too challenging to stick to the plan of staying at the Holdens Bay Holiday Park with family until Saturday.
Yesterday he said they would be packing up the tents and camping gear to head home.
He and his family had travelled from Levin and Hamilton to be together at the campsite and had planned it “ages” ago.
They had arrived on January 2 and Cossar said they would have left sooner had the wind been any worse.
“We are quite sheltered here.”
He said they visited Rotorua every few years and had intended to spend time out kayaking and enjoying the lakes. However, the weather had put a stop to those plans and they figured as it was not going to get any better they would head home.
The holiday park manager Dan Edwards said the phone had been ringing nonstop with cancellations, but there were also people ringing to book with nowhere else to go as other accommodation providers hit full capacity.
Many of the bookings had been campers in tents and while the campsite was meant to be at full capacity last night, many had cut their holidays short.
Edwards said Christmas and New year had been great, but this weather had really affected occupancy levels over the next few days.
Over on the coast, many of the region’s beaches closed to swimmers as strong currents and large waves made it too dangerous.
This included beaches in Tauranga and further east in Ōhope. Information on closed beaches and actively patrolled beaches can be found on Safeswim.