A series of urgent severe thunderstorm warnings was issued overnight for the Bay of Plenty region, with MetService predicting torrential rain as the storms moved south.<\/p>\n
Meteorologist Paris Marshall described the weather as a \u201cquite convective situation\u201d, where rising warm, moist air can produce heavy showers and thunderstorms.<\/p>\n
While rain is expected to be widespread, the most intense downpours could be concentrated in small areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very hard to predict exactly where they\u2019re going to pop up,\u201d Marshall said.<\/p>\n
MetService warned that rainfall intensities of 25 to 40mm an hour could cause surface flooding, flash flooding and slips, particularly near streams, rivers and narrow valleys.<\/p>\n
Marshall said the risk of localised downpours had expanded beyond Northland to include Auckland, Coromandel, Waikato, western Bay of Plenty, Taup\u014d and northern Taranaki.<\/p>\n
Auckland and Northland were among the areas \u201cmost at risk\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
Lightning reached Rotorua, Tauranga and Whakat\u0101ne yesterday as thunderstorms spread further east.<\/p>\n
\u201cTauranga also got hit with some quite heavy rain,\u201d Marshall said.<\/p>\n
She said the Bay of Plenty was in for \u201cquite a gloomy day\u201d, with further localised downpours possible.<\/p>\n
Heavy rain watches also cover Taranaki and parts of the central North Island, with MetService indicating a moderate chance of upgrades to warnings.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, muggy conditions are expected to continue tonight, with overnight lows of 16C forecast for Auckland and 18C for Napier.<\/p>\n
Marshall said the unsettled weather should begin easing from Wednesday, with temperatures returning to \u201cnormal temperatures that you\u2019d expect at this time\u201d.<\/p>\n
She advised people in vulnerable areas to clear their gutters and listen to local council advice if conditions deteriorate.<\/p>\n
Motorists should reconsider travelling during heavy rain, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s not looking too good, I would stay home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A series of urgent severe thunderstorm warnings was issued overnight for the Bay of Plenty region, with MetService…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2840,41242,806,124,29815,16776,19876,3092,2082,2964,42,6559,34090,2514,43,529,17711,6560,10715,2848,89818,109209,12419,69695,20592,1865,3010,40,38,41,39,8238,31866,25448],"class_list":["post-655999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-across","tag-alert","tag-as","tag-could","tag-downpours","tag-flash","tag-flooding","tag-floods","tag-for","tag-half","tag-headlines","tag-heavy","tag-intense","tag-island","tag-news","tag-north","tag-parts","tag-rain","tag-remains","tag-severe","tag-slips","tag-threaten","tag-threatening","tag-thunderstorm","tag-thunderstorms","tag-today","tag-top","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-under","tag-unleash","tag-upper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655999","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=655999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}