MetService News Release

Tuesday, 15 October 2013

Strong spring westerlies slowly ease

The very active front that brought damaging winds and very heavy rain to parts of New Zealand will gradually clear away to the east Tuesday afternoon.

Some recent stats on the storm:
The windiest place was Rimutaka Summit with gusts recorded to 169km/h at 3pm on Monday, Kelburn recorded 138km/h at 9am and 135km/h at 6pm.Masterton whistled through at 128km/h at 8pm. Many other spots in Wellington and Wairarapa had recorded gusts to between 120-125km/h.

Rainfall totals were also high with over 200mm of rain recorded at Arthurs Pass in 24 hours and over a hundred millimetres for Mt Taranaki.

The tight pressure gradient ahead of the active front continues to bring very strong and potentially damaging winds in a number of places, but not the strength of yesterday. MetService already has Watches and Warnings in place for strong winds and heavy rain for parts of the North Island.

An anticyclone will build across northern parts of New Zealand in the next day or so, bringing calmer weather with fine spells and lighter winds in most places.

The roaring forties will spawn another active trough for the end of the week but a larger anticyclone is expected to bring a return to settled weather across much of New Zealand over the weekend.

Please keep up to date with the latest forecasts and any watches/warnings at metservice.com or on mobile devices at m.metservice.com. You can also follow our updates on MetService TV, @metservice on Twitter and at blog. metservice.com.

ENDS

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