Overview
- MetService kept orange heavy rain warnings in place Sunday evening for the Hutt Valley, wider Wellington, Wairarapa and the Tararua ranges, with a 31-hour warning starting 11am Monday and local peaks up to 40mm an hour.
- States of local emergency in Ōhura and the Whanganui District were declared after Sunday’s flooding, with residents in Ōhura told to prepare to leave low-lying areas.
- Following Saturday’s torrential downpours in the Wellington region, at least 26 homes in Stokes Valley and Porirua were evacuated as streets flooded and silt swept into houses.
- Lower Hutt teams watched the Hutt River, Waiwhetu Stream and Black Creek overnight and urged people to avoid floodwater and non-essential travel as closures hit State Highway 58, parts of State Highway 59, SH3 and SH43.
- Forecasters explain that severe thunderstorm cells are short-lived and hard to predict, so alerts are issued on single storms at short notice and rainfall can spike fast in one suburb.