A low is this morning rapidly deepening off the Bay of Plenty coast bringing torrential rain to Coromandel and Great Barrier Island along with gale force south westerlies to Auckland.
Winds averaging 100km/h are gusting to 130km/h out in the Hauraki Gulf while exposed parts of Auckland City are receiving gusts to 90km/h. The Manukau Heads are being buffeted by gusts to 120km/h this hour.
WeatherWatch.co.nz advises motorists crossing the Auckland Harbour Bridge to expect winds gusting to 120km/h which will make driving extremely difficult at times. Severe gales are also expected around the Coromandel Peninsula.
The severe gales are being created by a ‘weather bomb’ – a technical description for a low that rapidly deepens in 24 hours.
A few showers and gusty sou’westers are expected for tonight’s Bledisloe Cup test match at Eden Park, although winds should ease a little from this morning.
Conditions are the opposite in the South Island with light winds and temperatures well below zero still. It’s currently -3 in Dunedin, -6 in Omarama, -2 in Queenstown and -1 in Christchurch, Queenstown and Wanaka.
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Laura on 18/07/2009 2:05am
Woken up at 3am by wind the likes of which I haven’t experienced before. By 4.30 am it had stopped somewhat and I fell asleep, but not before thinking the roof was going to blow off the house! Quite scary.
Amazingly the sky was completely clear and looked really beautiful
Now it’s blowing a gale again and drizzling. Not a lovely day!
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Diana on 18/07/2009 1:03am
Rain during the night.. turns to blue skies today, the odd patch of cloud.
The sun broke through about mid day. Winds are light and no signs of disturbs in the area.. all good
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Moirai Artists on 18/07/2009 12:05am
Yes we agree with the folks in Whangarei, that up north last night was severe – seemed worse than last weeks storm. Here at the Moirai Studio near the Waipoua Forest we lost power at 3am, out across the South Hokianga region, only just on again now, the wind and heavy rain squalls were pretty wild! Still a few heavy falls coming through…
We suspected ‘foul play was on its way’ after reading yesterdays blog on the ‘weather bomb’ -cheers to the Weatherwatch team for keeping us informed – great service!
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sw on 17/07/2009 11:09pm
No other wind direction whistles constant like the SWer,This low is worse (as far as wind) than last weekends because the SE doesnt blow in Auckland wheres this is obvious that it would blow though if its SE’ly Whangarei north will get a good blow as its exposed to the east.
Hopefully it will tend westerly as it wont be as bad.
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Elizabeth on 17/07/2009 10:27pm
Hi all,
Currently very overcast, steady rain, 8.2C. Barometer reading 978 wotnots, that’s very low isn’t it!? Not much wind really at this stage, guess things could change and we may see a different situation this afternoon. Very heavy rain overnight though and strong wind gust woke me up in the early hours.
Cheers
Elizabeth
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Derek on 17/07/2009 10:17pm
After a fairly stormy night here in Whangarei with plenty of rain and very strong winds it seems to be starting to clear, hurrah, at it’s height it did seem to be worse than last week but maybe this was due to the different wind direction.
Looking at the weather map for next few days we may be into some more settled weather with little or no rainy stuff, would you agree with this?
Jobs outdoors are piling up and need a settled spell to get into them.
I read with interest an article in today’s NZ Herald about the differing aspects of WW & Metservice. Think she had it fairly well explained and that between the two of you we can get a good balance on what is going on weatherwise.
So great work from WW for the more user friendly output.
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Whangarei on 17/07/2009 9:58pm
Wow what a night in Whangarei. Winds and gusts were very severe. Got woken at 4am this morning by winds so strong, it sounded like the roof was going to come off. Apparently it had been going on for several hours in the night. Was very surprised this morning that we have no trees down this morning. Strong gusts still going on now, but not as severe as last night. The weather we had last night was much worse than the predicted storm we had last weekend.
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