Despite it being the summer season down under a large part of central New Zealand has just been hit by some very stormy weather. Much of North Island and the northern part of South Island were affected. Both high winds and heavy rain caused a lot of problems.

Ferry and air travel between the North and South Islands were suspended for a while. This followed one ferry suffering considerable damage in the extremely rough seas on the short crossing on the Cook Strait between the two islands. Waves were estimated on some coasts to be up to 10 metres (33 feet) high!

Two aircraft had to turn back to Wellington when conditions were too dangerous for them to land. Commuter travel was generally disrupted over a wide area. To the north of Wellington, hundreds of people were evacuated because of rising flood-waters. The waters rose so quickly that some farmhouses were cut off and the owners had to be rescued from their roofs by helicopter.

An example of the amount of rain can be seen in the figures for Palmerston North, a town near the southern tip of North Island. Here, there has been 100mm (4 inches) of rain in just the last 3 days. This is well above the average for the entire month of February of 76mm (3 inches).

Gusts of up to 100mph brought hundreds of trees down, contributing to the electricity being cut off to thousands of homes in New Zealand's two largest cities, Auckland and further south in the capital, Wellington.

The severe weather conditions were brought about by an unusually intense low pressure system that moved across the southern tip of South Island late Sunday, local time. It was not only very intense for the time of year but unusually far north as well. Local forecasters are still warning of more heavy rain to come in some parts of the country during the next few days.

Weather News from the last five days:
15/02/2004
14/02/2004
13/02/2004
12/02/2004
11/02/2004

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