A burst of heavy rain is coming in bang on time for Auckland, between 10pm and midnight tonight. It brings the chance of squalls, a few rumbles of thunder and the risk of localised damaging winds – or a small tornado.

After midnight winds turn westerly and may rise further in exposed places.

As of 9pm exposed parts of Auckland were recording wind gusts of over 100km/h, other inner city suburbs have winds gusting 80 km/h.

When the front passes over some suburbs may receive wind gusts over 110km/h.

The rain band is fast moving (caught up in the gale force air flow over the city) but the rain is heavy enough to cause sudden surface and flash flooding for some areas. The risk for this is moderate, again in isolated downpours.

The front doesn’t have much thunder activity at the moment and we haven’t seen much life over the Tasman Sea today, however reports of thunderstorms have come in to WeatherWatch.co.nz this evening from Bulls and Palmerston North.

The front appears to be intensifying at the moment so thunderstorms may still develop.