Clean up underway in Nelson, Tasman after devastating floods
Farmers in Tasman and Nelson are getting on with repairs while they wait to see if more bad weather comes to frutition. RNZ reporter Nick James has been speaking to people in the region and gave an update to Charlotte Cook.
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RNZ News
2 hours ago
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Heavy rain warnings for Nelson, Tasman districts
The MetService has orange heavy rain warnings in place for the Tasman and Nelson districts for a large part of Thursday. Photo: MetService / Screenshot MetService has issued new orange heavy rain warnings for the already sodden Nelson and Tasman districts. The warning for Tasman, west of Motueka, runs from 3am Thursday to 9pm, and anticipates 120 to 150mm of rain, with more possible around the coast. The warning for the remainder of the district, as well as the Nelson District, Richmond and Bryant Ranges including the Rai Valley, and the Marlborough Sounds, is from 6am to 9pm on Thursday, and forecasts 80 to 100mm of rain about the Sounds and ranges. More than 300mm of rain fell in some areas late last week, leading to widespread flooding, slips and road closures . Two localised states of emergency remain in place as the clean-up continues. Community meetings will take place on Tuesday in Tapawera and Wakefield. MetService also had a heavy rain warning in place for Bay of Plenty, west of Whakatane from 8am on Thursday until 3am on Friday, with up to 120mm of rain forecast. On Tuesday morning parts of the South Island woke up to freezing temperatures. At about 6am Christchurch was -1.8C, with fine weather and a high of 11C forecast for the city. In Queenstown it was -1.1C early in the morning with a forecast of fine weather, light winds and a high of 9C. MetService showed the coldest temperature early Tuesday morning was Twizel at -5.2C at 6am, with a high of 4C forecast in Twizel. The warmest place in Aotearoa before 7am was Auckland's North Shore with 11.4C. MetService said it was a frosty start to the day for Canterbury and Marlborough, but overall Tuesday was forecast to be relatively settled apart from the odd shower or two. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
6 hours ago
- RNZ News
'The damage is looking huge' - communities grapple with storm clean-up
Communities are getting stuck into the huge clean-up after last week's rain. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii Communities across the top of the South Island are grappling with the mega clean-up task ahead, following last week's deluge. Homes in Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough have been let uninhabitable, roads are damaged and properties have been inundated with flood waters. Rural Support Trust Top of the South chair Richard Kempthorne said the destruction was significant. "The damage is looking huge, so there are a lot of people, particularly on the Motueka, but also the Wai-iti River where the river has gone wide and very high and caused a lot of damage." Kempthorne said long-term residents were in shock, as they had never seen such severe flooding. "I think to put the scale into perspective, this is for both the Waimea, the Wai-iti and the Motueka rivers, these are floods that you would expect to see maybe once every 100 years. So they are massive floods that pretty much everybody who's living by them, haven't seen before." Kempthorne said the trust expected the demand for services to be very high, but it is too early to say exactly how much help would be needed. MetService is also warning the regions to prepare for more thunderstorms, wind and rain later this week. Kempthorne said people were hoping for the best. "Probably the adrenaline rush that comes immediately after an event like this is wearing off or worn off, and so they're probably really hoping that the weather event that is coming is not anywhere near as severe as what we've just had," he said. He urged anyone that needed help to get in touch with the trust or Civil Defence. The government has also unlocked extra support for flood-affected farmers and growers, with $100,000 made available to support and coordinate recovery efforts. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
15 hours ago
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NZ cities are getting hotter: 5 things councils can do now to keep us cooler when summer comes
By Timothy Welch of Summer in Wellington. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King Stand on any car park on a sunny day in February and the heat will radiate through your shoes. At 30C air temperature, that asphalt hits 50-55C - hot enough to cause second-degree burns to skin in seconds. Right now, in the northern hemisphere summer, 100 million Americans are dealing with 38C temperatures. Britain is preparing for hundreds of heat deaths . In New Zealand, of course, we're still lighting fires and complaining about the cold. But that gives us time to prepare for our own heatwaves. Open-air car parks that sit empty for 20 hours a day could become cooling infrastructure instead. Transport routes can become cooling corridors. Replace asphalt with trees, grass and permeable surfaces, and you can drop surface temperatures by 12C. It's not complicated. It's not even expensive. NIWA data shows New Zealand is already experiencing extreme temperatures five times more frequently than historical baselines. Wellington hit 30.3C and Hamilton 32.9C in January, both all-time records. Marine heatwaves are persisting around South Island coasts months longer than usual. Aucklanders will face 48 additional days above 25C annually by 2099, as summer temperatures increase by 3.6C. Auckland Council has already adopted the most severe warming scenario (3.8C) for infrastructure planning, acknowledging previous models underestimated the pace of change. Even Wellington's famously cool winds won't offset the estimated 79 percent increase in residential cooling energy demand by 2090, driven by hotter, longer summers and more extreme-heat days. A quarter of New Zealand's population will be over 65 by 2043, an age when heat regulation becomes harder and fixed incomes make cooling costs a real burden. Currently, 14 heat-related deaths occur annually among Auckland's over-65 population when temperatures exceed just 20C. As the mercury rises, our older population will be at a greater risk. While global average temperature increases of 1.5C might appear modest, the actual temperatures we experience in our cities is far more extreme. The built environment - all that concrete and asphalt - traps heat like an oven. But converting car parks back to green space can knock the temperature down dramatically. Research from Osaka Prefecture in Japan recorded surface temperature reductions of up to 14.7C when comparing asphalt to grass-covered parking during sunny summer conditions. Another study found temperature differences averaging 11.79C between asphalt and grass surfaces, with air temperature differences of 7-8C at human height. Trees are the heavy lifters here. Stand under a tree on a hot day, and it can feel 17C cooler than standing in the sun . Add rain gardens (shallow, planted areas designed to capture and filter stormwater) and ground cover for another 2-4C reduction. Layer these elements together, and you get cooling that works even on overcast days. Grassy and tree-covered car parks are just a starting point. Auckland's 7800 kilometres of roads could become the city's cooling system. Every bus lane, cycleway and walking path is an opportunity for green infrastructure. If we stop thinking of transport corridors as merely a way to get from one place to another, and see them as multifunctional cooling networks, the possibilities multiply while the costs remain relatively low. Melbourne's Covid-era parklet programme proved this works: 594 small conversions created 15,000 square metres of public space at just A$300-900 per square metre. Converting even a small percentage of New Zealand's parking infrastructure could create connected cooling corridors throughout our cities. Protecting cycleways with a tree canopy would encourage active transport while cooling neighbourhoods. Bus lanes with rain garden medians would improve service reliability while managing stormwater. Summer is six months away - maybe not enough time to do all the work needed, but certainly enough to get a plan in place. Here are five things councils could do. Auckland Council's NZ$1 billion climate action package includes grants of $1000 to $50,000 for climate projects. Wellington's Climate and Sustainability Fund and Christchurch's 50-year Urban Forest Plan provide similar frameworks. The Ministry for the Environment's National Policy Statement on Urban Development creates opportunity by removing minimum parking requirements. This frees up land for trees, gardens and public spaces instead of underused asphalt, maximising climate co-benefits: cooler surfaces, better stormwater management and more pleasant streetscapes. By next February, we can either be thanking ourselves for planting trees and converting car parks, or feeling the heat from that 50C asphalt. * Timothy Welch is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. This story was originally published on The Conversation.
