It started on Tuesday and is only today, Sunday, finally easing up in our nation’s largest city. Auckland has had two events within six days that have each created over a months worth of rain in 24 hours – leading to serious flooding across the region.

Today the centre of the low has made ‘landfall’ over Northland and at noon it crossed directly over the top of Great Barrier Island and northern Coromandel Peninsula.

As the low tracked by it created, as forecast, further significant downpours.  

WeatherWatch.co.nz issued a FloodAlert saying it was heavy enough to cause surface and/or flash flooding between 12noon and 1pm mostly. Some downpours may linger longer in the south east.

Not long after WeatherWatch pushed out the alert Auckland Civil Defence said there was a rush of 111 calls in Titirangi.

The low is tracking SE and into the Bay of Plenty area – this is slowly clearing this band of very heavy rain over Auckland, with skies drying out to the north west of the city and brighter spells moving in.

This afternoon sees a more refreshing, less humid, air flow moving in – brisk westerlies will blow through across Sunday afternoon in Northland and Auckland bringing mainly dry weather and just the odd shower. 

As of 1pm the bulk of the rain was easing over the city – but some torrential downpours may linger in the south or east, easing properly by 2pm.

WeatherWatch.co.nz has received numerous reports of serious flooding on highways, railway stations and parks in the city – motorists in particular are advised to take extreme care and perhaps avoid driving until after 2pm if possible, with some roads at a crawl due to flood waters.

PLEASE NOTE – the heavy rain means Aucklanders actually need to seriously SAVE and REDUCE your water usage, to avoid a boil notice being given for the city. See the urgent story on our homepage for more information.

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Image above from the 11am hour
Image below from the 12noon hour

The concern now is for flooding rains moving into other parts of the country, such as Bay of Plenty or parts of the North Island.

Windier weather will flow behind this system but damaging winds aren’t so likely in our view – but after recent rains there may be some pockets of issues with strong winds and, for example, tree roots loosened in the soil by the saturating rains over the past week perhaps being uprooted. However we don’t generally expect winds to be a serious problem for most.

Aucklanders will be happy knowing Sunday afternoon will likely bring in sunny spells with drier weather, even if windier conditions for some.

A large high comes in this week – with a week of dry days on the way the region will drain nicely and dry out gradually.

Next weekend a large high pressure system is expected to cover Auckland – and in fact all of New Zealand.

– Images / Funded & owned by the NZ Taxpayer, MS

– WeatherWatch.co.nz