Auckland was hit by a severe overnight thunderstorm which has caused flooding in areas across the region.
The line of thunderstorms, connected to ex-tropical Cyclone Tam, is moving very slowly over the area.
Auckland Emergency Management this morning opened a Civil Defence centre at the Fickling Convention Centre, on Mt Albert Rd in Three Kings.
“If you need to leave your home due to flooding, and are unable to shelter with friends or family, please carefully make your way to this centre.
“The centre will offer basic shelter and support for those displaced by this weather event.”
MetService meterologist Alain Baillie said 26.5 millimetres of rain was recorded at Mahurangi, in northern Auckland, between 10pm and 11pm.
About 21 millimetres was recorded at Whenuapai Airport in the hour leading to midnight.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) said it received hundreds of calls for help in Auckland overnight, due to the storm
Between 11:30pm Friday and 4am Saturday there were 223 weather-related calls asking for firefighters’ help, Fenz told RNZ.
Two of the incidents involved water rescues, with people trapped in their cars by floodwaters: one in Wesley and one in Onehunga.
Auckland Emergency Management general manager Adam Maggs said there had been no reports of injuries, and only a few reports of floodwaters getting properly inside houses.
“Infrastructure wise, pretty much everything’s operational as normal and can be dealt with in a BAU (business as usual) sort of capacity,” he told RNZ.
“There’s mainly surface flooding, fairly localised, because with thunderstorms you tend to get downpours and they’re in a quite a sort of a refined area. So around the Onehunga area, around Mount Roskill, we’ve definitely seen road flooding and we’ve recommended people to not drive through floodwaters.
“We’ve had some cars stall in the water, so (Fenz) had to get those vehicles removed … we had some alarms being triggered because of, you know, the rain-related flooding, and we’ve also had a few garages flooded.
“We’ve only had a couple indications of a dwelling having some carpet wet.”
The downpours come off the back of days of wild weather following ex-Cyclone Tam, which left thousands without power and damaged roads and other infrastructure.
