Parts of the upper North Island experienced “quite a bit of thunderstorm activity” overnight, with thousands of lightning strikes recorded.
Shortly after 10.30pm, MetService issued a severe thunderstorm watch for Northland and Auckland from 11pm.
This was lifted at 4am, but Aucklanders reported still hearing booming thunder and seeing lightning strikes into the early morning.
MetService meteorologist Devlin Lynden told 1News there had been “quite a bit of thunderstorm activity overnight and early hours of this morning” in Auckland and Northland.
He said there were approximately 2000 lightning strikes largely focused in the Kaipara Harbour area about 1am.
A large lightning strike was captured on 1News weather cam at the Sky Tower this morning. (Source: 1News)
“But then as we’ve had people waking up this morning around 6am or so, there’s been another band further south which has been impacting the Auckland area and it’s been trending past 3000 strikes.
“At this point, there’s probably been closer to about 4000 strikes since midnight,” he said.
NIWA reported that more than 5000 lightning strikes were observed over the upper North Island and adjacent waters from 12am to 7am Monday.
The day ahead
Lynden said lightning and thunder was still expected to continue “largely offshore Auckland”.
“I think as the sun starts to rise and things settle down; it’ll mostly move off. So in the next hour or so things should begin to clear up for you guys.”
He said there had been some heavy showers this morning associated with the thunderstorms, which were expected to become isolated in the afternoon and clear to finer breaks toward the evening.
Lynden said “for the rest of the country, it’s much the same story”.
“After a very cold weekend and a bit of quite a bit of rain about the place easing this morning, with a bit more mild temperatures.
He said it would not be “quite as cold as it has been over the weekend”.