Wind on the way

MetService has issued a Severe Weather Watch for strong northwest winds in the Wellington & Wairarapa area for this evening through to tomorrow afternoon, as well as some heavy rain for the Tararuas.

Hopefully this lot of weather doesn't end up like the weather bomb that hit us on Tuesday evening.

There were cars aquaplaning on the highway, I ended up travelling at 30kmh to a threatened flooding incident in Pukerua Bay because I couldn't see well enough to go any faster, even with the windscreen wipers going full-tilt.

Grays Road flooded, there was surface flooding by Airlie Road, and all over town, and our after-hours call centre fielded quite a few calls from residents with weather-related problems.

Our rain gauge at the Titahi Bay wastewater treatment plant recorded 31.5mm of rain for the 24 hours to 1pm Wednesday, and I'm pretty sure most of that fell before 9.30pm on Tuesday night.

Hm... I wonder if I could persuade weather ambassador Bob McDavitt to write a guest post for us about the differences between weather warnings & watches, and the thresholds for issuing them.