Hot, hot hot! Families dive into water as Bay of Plenty mercury soars

Kingston Abraham and Teagan Ngati cool off at McLaren Falls. Photo / George Novak

As the mercury crept steadily higher over the last few days, Tauranga residents raced to region's many watery playgrounds to cool off.

Welcome Bay resident Jamie Abraham visited McLaren Falls on Sunday with her two children, Teagan Ngati, 6, and Kingston Abraham, 10.

It was the second time in as many days that they had visited the waterfall, she said.

"We'd been down the bottom below the bridge, and, because they'd opened the floodgates, we thought we'd try out the top part," she said.

Abraham said they normally visited the Mount Maunganui Main Beach, but "this was something different".

She was trying to keep the children occupied and away from television or computers, she said, and it was easy to take them to the beach or McLaren Falls because they kept cool at the same time.

Abraham said the kids were not coping very well with the hot weather, becoming "scratchy" if they were too hot.

"That's why we've been going just about every day to a swimming hole or a beach," she said. "We go everywhere, just anywhere to keep the kids cool."

MetService meteorologist Andy Best said the highest recorded temperature in Tauranga over the long weekend was 28 degrees Celsius, recorded at Tauranga Airport on Saturday.

The highest temperature in the Bay of Plenty was recorded in Kawerau on Sunday at 30.5 degrees.

Temperatures for the region this week are expected to stay much the same, before cooling off towards the weekend, he said.