Thunderstorms 17/2/2012

[iomkiwi]

I heard while at work that there had been a hailstorm north of us at Kaeo so as I left work I thought I would have a look and see if there was anything likely. Was just driving down the first bit of road and was looking south and saw a likely looking cloud build up, and then there was a big CG strike right in the middle of it! As I'm not a brontophobe I put the right indicator on instead of the left and went off to have a closer look 

I ended up going up a hill (the one in the middle of my south webcam) about 3km south of Kerikeri, just as I got there it started raining and quickly got very heavy with about 6mm hail as well, leaves and bark was being blown off the gum trees around the place as well. The lightning had stopped by the time I got there so it was only very heavy rain. The roadside drains that were dry when I went into the road looked like this when I left 15 minutes later.


I then drove back into Kerikeri heading for home the rain was still very heavy and a lot of vehicles had pulled to the side of the raod to let it pass. As I got into Kerikeri the road and ground was dry as the shower was moving thru just to the south.

This shot is from a sunny Kerikeri as the storm moves west off down the inlet.



And just to finish it off here is a pic from my webcam of the storm I was sitting in.



Ther are some other shots there from my webcam starting from about 4pm - and as you can see on the webcam shot and despite what you see in the first photo, my station is yet to record any rain today 

Anybody else get any action?

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[iomkiwi]

Thought I should post up the Metservice 5pm radar image as well for posterity.




ps I'm sure my car is a lot cleaner than it was when I left for work in the morning 

[David]

No rain in Howick but sea breeze convergence created heavy thunderstorms to the SW and S of here. We could hear occasional thunder rumbling away for several hours, some of the rumbles were fairly loud too.