Almost like the tropics

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

It is perhaps unsurprising that as our wettest year on record since 1878 draws to a close, Tuesday should deliver one of the heaviest bursts of rain in living memory.

A massive raincloud swept over the city from the west, heralded by thunder, and hit the city with a sudden “floodgate”  deluge at 1.25pm.

As torrents of water overwhelmed gutters and waterfalls poured off every roof, a private rain gauge at Makaraka recorded 25 millimetres in  just 10 minutes.

With the ground already soaked from successive rain events over the year, surface flooding started immediately.

Then, almost as happens in the topics, the rain suddenly stopped and at 1.43pm, blue sky and sun had roofs and lawns steaming, and instant lakes draining away.

Other localised spots may have had even heavier falls, as MetService’s radar at Mahia saw raincells and hail drive across the region, and stalling over the hills and coast north of Gisborne to Tolaga Bay before finally dying out.

Gisborne Airport recorded 24.3mm for the period between 1pm and 7pm while at Makaraka, the day brought a total of 30mm — most of it from 1.25 to 1.35pm.

The record for the most intensive rainfall in New Zealand was set by a 10-minute deluge of 34mm in Tauranga, on April 17, 1948.

Nineteen-forty-eight was a bad year for rain, with the Flats totally under water in the May ’48 flood.

Roger Handford