St Anthony's School had a ceiling collapse. Motorcycle HQ had water damage, which wrecked four computers. They received offers of help from as far as Dannevirke. Pahiatua Christian Fellowship building's carpets were soaked.
Even the Bush Telegraph building received help from the fire brigade and the community to clear water out.
Roads turned to rivers in Dannevirke last Monday, shops flooded and vehicles were swamped by water as a severe thunderstorm dumped more than 23mm of rain on Dannevirke in less than an hour.
The dramatic thunderstorms were the result of a static weather pattern settling over New Zealand, MetService said.
Derek's Electrical co-owner Kathy Massey had to deal with flooding at the back on High St. Tararua District Council's finance manager left a meeting in the mayor's office to discover knee-high water was flowing through his car on Denmark St. He was unsure what damage had been done to the car's electrical systems. On High St, NZCU Baywide shut early after flooding.
Mesoscale Systems
The burst of intense rain, hail and wind that hit Pahiatua last Tuesday was called a mesoscale convective system (MCS), a complex of thunderstorms organised on a larger scale than the individual thunderstorms but smaller than extratropical cyclones, and normally persist for several hours.
A mesoscale convective system's overall cloud and precipitation pattern may be round or linear. The type that forms during the warm season over land has maximum activity during the late afternoon and evening. A temperature drop from 22 to 14 degrees and 47mm of rainfall was recorded by Philip Morrison in Pahiatua township.
