There are likely weeks of clean up ahead for some homes in Auckland and Northland after the violent storm that hit the region yesterday morning.
Flooded street in Greenlane, Auckland, on Monday 21 March 2022. Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd
A torrential downpour hit the upper part of the country overnight Sunday and then landed in Auckland, at its heaviest around between 8am and 10am yesterday.
Torrential rain is classified as above 40mm an hour. MetService said this downpour reached 70mm an hour at times.
A large amount of rain forced its way into the lower level of Chantel Kruger's home in Takapuna, on Auckland's North Shore.
"The force of the water was dreadful," Kruger said.
"It flooded the whole downstairs garage, it went through my son's bedroom, probably to my waist deep. It made its way up four stairs," she said.
"That was really scary. Our washing machine, tumble dryer, our huge chest freezers - they were all floating."
She rushed around grabbing any valuables that she could.
"I had to try make my way to try save some of my son's stuff, his laptops, his stuff for work. There was not much I could do but cry. You get to the stage where you actually just realise you're fighting a losing battle. There's actually nothing you can do."
Fortunately, the Kruger's house is two storeys and the upstairs is undamaged allowing them to continue to live there. They rent but don't have contents insurance so will have to fork out to replace what's damaged.
Parts of the city were hit hard either due to geography or blocked stormwater drains.
Kathryn Prince, who lives down a hill in Eden Terrace in central Auckland, had both.
"I came out front and our neighbour next door was just above knee-deep in water. There were about four cars slowly being submerged. So a group of us went out and took mops and shovels, because it was obvious the drains had been blocked."
Clearing out the grates did help, but not enough to spare their downstairs neighbours.
"The flat downstairs was in ankle-deep water. It looked like it was coming up from underneath the floorboards."
It was a busy day for carpet replacement and flood restoration company Jae Services.
"Looks like we're about 600 flood [claims] from Northland down through Auckland," the company's business manager Mike Barron said.
They are now flat out assessing homes.
"Very strange for us to have a big flood event like this at this time of year. But nothing surprises us with climate change."
It's not a surprise to Niwa meteorologist Ben Noll either.
"When you're talking breaking hourly rainfall records at several stations, in many respects it's along the lines of what we expect to see as we go down the line."
He said climate change was clearly causing more extreme weather events.
"Flooding has always been part of living here in Aotearoa New Zealand. However, in a warming world we expect those events, when they do happen, they can be more severe. We've certainly had a taste of that now several times in different parts of the country over the last year or two," Noll said.
The low-pressure weather system is still around and hanging over northern and central parts of New Zealand.
MetService said another low was likely to form on Wednesday and may cause heavy rain for the Bay of Plenty and Gisborne.
