Anyone ready for summer yet?! This certainly hasn’t been the long weekend many of us would have been looking forward to, weather-wise!
Our thoughts are with those most affected in Auckland, the Coromandel and the Waitomo district.
While we’ve been a little more fortunate than other areas, we’ve still seen some pretty extreme weather across our district. Many of our teams, including our stormwater and wastewater teams, our roading team and our contractors, have been working around the clock on the challenges that this sort of weather event brings, so a massive shout out to them for putting in the hard yards.
We’ve also had to take the rare step of urgently asking everyone to help out by conserving water and we’d like to say a massive thank you to all of our communities across the district for helping out, please keep it up!
A huge thank you too for not only conserving water, but for helping to share the message. Our Facebook post with the urgent conserve water message had over 200 shares in just a couple of hours! It makes a huge difference as we try to minimise the impact of the heavy rain.
Speaking of the rain, what have we seen over the weekend? Here’s a few stats:
- Taupō Airport recorded 113mm of rainfall yesterday. It’s been a wet start to the year, but that number is more than triple what the airport had recorded in the first 27 days of January!
- The Tauranga-Taupō River peaked just after midnight last night with a flow of around 240 cumecs (cubic metres per second), and a level of 2.83m. This is one of the biggest flows in recorded history dating back to 1976. Our team were monitoring the level overnight while our friends from Waikato Regional Council had staff on-site at the river all night with flood protection equipment, but fortunately it wasn’t needed. The photo below shows the SH1 bridge and river level at 6.45am this morning.
- The Tongariro River peaked at about 515 cumecs but stayed well within its stop banks.
- The lake has risen about 23cm since Friday afternoon (that is a lot in just over 36 hours!).
- There was significant surface flooding on State Highway 1 between Motuoapa and Tūrangi, which has been monitored by Waka Kotahi. Many places around the district also had surface flooding.
- There have been slips right around the district, most notably in Omori and Pukawa, and on Mapara Road. It’s been a busy weekend for our hard-working contractors who are continuing to clear any slips as they are reported.
- There was a large slip on State Highway 41 at Hipaua (Waihi hill) between Tokaanu and Kuratau/Omori which has now been cleared thanks to the quick work of Waka Kotahi and contractors.
A quick reminder that if you come across a slip on a local road that hasn't been reported, the best thing to do is to call us on 0800 ASK TDC or 07 376 0899 which is a 24/7 service. The team will get all the essential info on the phone and then notify our contractors to clear the area and put up signage, as needed. If it's a state highway you can advise Waka Kotahi on 0800 4 HIGHWAYS (0800 44 44 49).
While it’s easy to think the rain may have eased where you are, please bear in mind a lot of the heaviest rain can be relatively isolated and some parts of the district are likely to see more. It will take some time for the impact of all of this rain to clear and it sounds like more rain is coming in a week or so – for now, please continue to conserve water where possible. Thanks everybody.
