Two Northland fishermen stumbled on a scene resembling a winter wonderland after a freak hail storm left hundreds of metres of a remote beach blanketed in ice.
David Bishop, of Kerikeri, and his mate Bryce Taylor, of Glinks Gully, had been fishing at the entrance of Kaipara Harbour on Saturday when they decided to call it a day around 5pm.
Their route home took them around Pouto Point, past the historic lighthouse, and north up Ripiro Beach towards Dargaville.
A few hundred metres north of the lighthouse they saw something that had them rubbing their eyes in disbelief.
"When we were fishing we heard a bit of thunder, but no rain or anything, so sweet as, we finished fishing and come around the corner past the lighthouse, and then it was like, 'Holy s***!' We just couldn't believe it."
For several hundred metres, from the water's edge up into the dunes, the beach was blanketed in hail. Photo: Supplied / David Bishop
For several hundred metres, from the water's edge up into the dunes, the beach was blanketed in hail.
"There as not a soul there, all the fishermen had left. What a sight. It looked like snow at first but it was definitely hail. A lot of it. In places it would've been a good two inches (5cm) deep."
Bishop said it had clearly just happened, and was confined to one area.
There was no hail around the lighthouse or further north on the beach.
"So it was just in that one random area, which was weird. It was really eerie," he said.
"I spend a lot of time fishing on the beach but I've never seen anything like that before. I've seen some beautiful dawns on Ripiro Beach, but nothing as spectacular as that."
The beach at Pouto, south of Dargaville, is blanketed in ice after a freak hail storm. Photo: Supplied / David Bishop
Ripiro Beach stretches from Pouto Point at the entrance to Kaipara Harbour to Maunganui Bluff, north of Dargaville.
At 110km it is New Zealand's longest driveable beach, longer even than Ninety Mile Beach (which is in fact 88km long).
Meteorologist Silvia Martino said MetService did not directly detect hail.
But she said storms were heavy enough to produce hail in Northland, Auckland, Bay of Plenty and Rotorua on Saturday.
"Yesterday evening and overnight, we've had some very heavy showers producing large amounts of hail, enough to blanket the ground in white," she said. "Because those showers were just one narrow line, some people will have seen nothing at all. But if you were right underneath that line of heavy showers, people got quite a dumping of hail.
"When we get a cold air loft, if the ground or, in this case, the ocean is warm enough, it can produce thunderstorms. But because the ground is cold at the moment, it's winter, we're not seeing thunderstorms sparking off over the land, but instead we get this hail produced by that cold air loft."
She said areas from Rotorua northwards could get more thunderstorms and hail on Sunday.
MetService said it had detected over 1800 lightning strikes offshore in the last 12 hours to 10am on Sunday.
MetService says north of Rotorua could get more thunderstorms and hail. Photo: Supplied / David Bishop
The Kaipara District, which is just north of Auckland, is no stranger to freak weather.
A tornado seriously injured two people and damaged many homes - some irreparably - when it struck Mangawhai in January this year.
In August 2011, farmland around Tutamoe, Northland's second highest peak, was blanketed in snow, delighting children who were able to build snowmen and go sledding for the first time in their lives.
While snow is common further south, in Northland it is extremely rare.
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