Hawke’s Bay was late on Tuesday expected to be spared the worst impacts of a storm which has again thrown Auckland and other areas north of the city into a state of emergency.
While national weather agency MetService had several alerts in place for either continuing or imminent storm action, none were for the Hawke’s Bay-Gisborne area still reeling from Cyclone Gabrielle, the disaster that claimed eight lives in Hawke’s Bay three months ago.
Warnings had been issued for the area from Northland to the Waikato and Bay of Plenty, and parts of Taranaki and the South Island.
But the Hawke’s Bay regional forecast was for early rain in parts of the region on Wednesday, with some heavy showers in the ranges but northerlies turning to fresh westerlies in the morning and clearing, and some of the same on Thursday, but otherwise up to a week of mainly fine weather.
About 4.30pm on Tuesday, the Napier temperature was about reported as 18.7C, and the nationwide high was 19.6C. A fine weekend was forecast.
