As predicted earlier Sunday evening thunderstorms moved down from Northland during the evening and in to Auckland and Waikato overnight.
The Lightning Tracker at WeatherWatch.co.nz detected a few thousand strikes during the storm overnight.
Updated: 00:05am Monday.
The line of thunderstorms are slowly easing in Auckland but may possibly return again in the early hours of today. Waikato and Coromandel are now in the firing line.
WeatherWatch.co.nz advises motorists to take extreme care with downpours and bright flashes making driving hazardous.
The lightning appears to be mostly fork lightning which is the most dangerous. WeatherWatch says people should switch off non-essential electronic appliances, such as computers, until the storms have passed.
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SW on 28/06/2009 8:42pm
It was much warmer,reminisant of this time last year culminating in last nights lightning display and warm weather,today so far looks back to this winter again with the usual story of the past few months with the colder wind,pine needles,condensation etc.
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Daniel on 28/06/2009 12:15pm
Old mother nature is still putting on a good show. I live in Birkenhead and have been watching the show for the last couple of hours. Saw a bolt touch down around the pt Chev area. Been some good bangs. All about 2 or 3k from the house.. Waiting for the overhead one to go off and shake the place. This is awesome!
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Stu on 28/06/2009 11:22am
Since about 11:15pm we have had quite a bit of thunder over South Auckland and as I type this we are getting heavy rain!!!
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Alan on 28/06/2009 10:56am
“WeatherWatch says people should switch off non-essential electronic appliances, such as computers, until the storms have passed.”
In other words – stop reading this 😉
But this obviously doesn’t include my weather computer.
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WW Forecast Team on 28/06/2009 11:03am
Haha – we also second guessing using that line – as it obviously is asking people not to look at our site at a time when people want to!!
I’m using a wireless laptop so i’m hopefully safe from being zapped… and it certainly is rare.
I guess we should point out that if you can’t see lightning, or it’s very dull, then dorry worry about switching things off. If it’s over your house then it’s wise to avoid it (at least to perhaps just flick on quickly for an update between flashes! 🙂
Cheers
Philip Duncan
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Alan on 28/06/2009 11:11am
I’ll just trust my Belkin surge protector (and it all appears to be happening south of me).
Thought I should also mention my station is only 5 points off bombing. 1007.7 @ 2:31am, 988.7 now and still dropping.
I’ll let you know in the morning, I’m not planning on staying up.
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Zelda on 28/06/2009 10:49am
Have much thunder over West Auckland. Your forecast was spot on!
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WW Forecast Team on 28/06/2009 11:00am
Thanks Zelda… we had mentioned Northland thunderstorms in our 5pm update, then added to our Auckland forecast by 7pm. We actually were given data at 3:30pm (from our friends at Weather.com) rating a 100% chance of thunderstorms tonight…but we were unsure so held off until they appeared further north just to be safe. (People are always so disappointed when forecasters predict them and they don’t eventuate. So we take a very conservative view at putting them in ourf forecasts).
Enjoy the show – try and get some good pics!
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Daniel E on 28/06/2009 12:26pm
Wow, tonight was awesome. Saw some awesome forked lightining and some very loud thunder over my place in mt eden, wish I had my camera setup! Now that it’s mostly passed me, I have the door open, just to hear the thunder off in the distance.Very cool indeed.
Appreciate your comments about trying not to disappoint people, I know I often get excited when the met service predicts a high chance for AKL, only to find it doesn’t eventuate or it misses us completely. I hope we get some more tomorrow, got the day off from work.
Cheers
Daniel
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