Cyclone Gita: Thirty years since Bola

The Hawke's Bay region has breezed through the threat of Cyclone Gita but will this week remember the devastation that swept through 30 years ago.

The threat to Hawke's Bay from Gita, cyclone, ex-cyclone or lack thereof, was late yesterday proving to be little more than a reminder in Hawke's Bay of the approach of the 30th anniversary of one of the most devastating of all.

Cyclone Bola started to form in the Pacific on February 24, 1988, and hammered most of the North Island, but particularly Northland, Bay of Plenty, East Cape and northern Hawke's Bay.

Rainfall in some areas north of Napier, where the Napier-Wairoa road was closed by slips for more than a week, was recorded at more than 700mm on March 6-8, and a three-day fall of 917mm was recorded inland from Tolaga Bay, north of Gisborne.

The impact was huge, the force of the storm being highlighted perhaps most graphically by the force of the Wairoa River, laden with logs and other debris, as it smashed through the concrete pillared and decked Wairoa town bridge on the morning of March 7 and took out the centre span.

Several of New Zealand's bigger storms in the past century have happened in the January to April period, including Cyclone Giselle, which included the Wahine Disaster 50 years ago on April 10, more recently Cyclone Wilma on January 28-29, 2011, and Debbie in April last year.

Yesterday, there were no hints Gita would unduly trouble Hawke's Bay, where temperatures were into the 30s in Hastings and Napier, and a forecast for northern Hawke's Bay for partly cloudy weather today with a few showers about the ranges, gradually clearing to a fine afternoon and northwesterlies.

The forecast for Napier-Hastings was for cloudy and northwesterly conditions, with occasional showers developing tomorrow afternoon.

A MetService meteorologist said there were no signs of anything else forming in the tropics — "at least not in the next five days".

On average about nine cyclones form in our part of the tropics each summer-autumn season, but only about a third affect New Zealand.