A Herald reporter was earlier stuck on a bus on the Northern Motorway.<\/p>\n
He said the bridge closed to traffic in both directions about 2.30pm. <\/p>\n
\u201cTraffic is crawling from about Esmonde [Rd] off-ramp. There are two trucks blocking the four lanes heading into the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the first closure of the day after speed and lane restrictions were put in place just after 1pm.<\/p>\n
The reporter said the bridge reopened after 16 minutes, but only two lanes were operating with a 50km\/h speed limit.<\/p>\n
His bus had now made it over the bridge and was headed into the city. <\/p>\n
\u201cTraffic getting on to the motorway heading north is backed up all around Victoria Park, probably a combination of the protest and bridge closure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, New Zealand faces a lingering risk of strong winds and scattered thunderstorms as the weekend winds down.<\/p>\n
While the North Island will see scattered showers, and the South Island some brief rain in the west and along Southland\u2019s coast.<\/p>\n
Strong wind watches remain in place for Hawke\u2019s Bay, Tararua, Coromandel, Tasman, Dunedin, Clutha, and Southland, with gusts up to 100km\/h possible in exposed areas.<\/p>\n
Snow was reported near Lewis Pass on Saturday, accumulating down to around 500m.<\/p>\n
Temperatures on Sunday are expected to reach highs of 17-18C across most of the North Island, with overnight lows of around 12-14C.<\/p>\n
In the South Island, highs of 15-17C will drop to 8-10C overnight.<\/p>\n
Saturday brought a turbulent start to the weekend, with strong winds and patchy thunderstorms sweeping across much of the country.<\/p>\n
Western coasts were particularly affected, with severe thunderstorms recorded in some areas and gusts of 90-110km\/h alongside heavy rainfall of 10-20mm per hour.<\/p>\n
MetService meteorologist Alain Bailee urged drivers to pull over if caught in thunderstorms. \u201cThey can pack quite a punch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
By Saturday afternoon, the risk of storms will ease for most of the South Island, though the threat to North Island\u2019s west coast will remain.<\/p>\n
Most weather warnings were set to expire by 5pm, giving way to a strong south-westerly flow across the country on Sunday, although some showers will remain embedded in that.<\/p>\n
The extreme weather also impacted a planned pro-Palestine march in Auckland, which altered its route to avoid the harbour bridge because of unsafe wind speeds.<\/p>\n
NZTA warned that gusts over 90km\/h could have led to temporary bridge closures or lane reductions.<\/p>\n
Motorists are advised to remain cautious on roads this weekend and continue monitoring MetService alerts as conditions evolve.<\/p>\n
Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. He previously worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Herald reporter was earlier stuck on a bus on the Northern Motorway. He said the bridge closed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,11730,51,1565,17163,679,2070,20590,20589,20591,111,43,139,69,1118,20593,1854,2848,1961,20592,8218,10000],"class_list":{"0":"post-19268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-after","9":"tag-afternoon","10":"tag-auckland","11":"tag-bridge","12":"tag-closure","13":"tag-forced","14":"tag-full","15":"tag-gusts","16":"tag-harbour","17":"tag-metservice","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-of","23":"tag-reopened","24":"tag-reopens","25":"tag-severe","26":"tag-this","27":"tag-thunderstorms","28":"tag-warns","29":"tag-wind"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}