Russell Brown: The flaws in Auckland's weather warnings

NZ Herald

30-04-2025

Russell Brown: "For all the soul-searching after the events of 2023, it seems official agencies still haven't worked out how to tell us important things urgently."
I was preparing for bed before midnight on Good Friday when I heard the first peal of thunder, somewhere in the distance. Then another. I walked into the office and loaded the rain radar on the MetService website. It was clear things were about to kick off.
A line of rain storms, north to south, was descending the map and beginning to slam into Auckland. I knew that set-up: it was how the radar looked during the extraordinary rain event of Auckland Anniversary weekend 2023, when it felt like reality itself had torn.
I knocked on the door of our younger son, an autistic night owl who appreciates a heads-up about sudden loud sounds, then lay in bed listening to the rain sheeting down, punctuated by cracks and bangs of thunder overhead.
By morning, the Mt Albert New World, which closed for 20 months after the 2023 storm, had flooded again, and the footbridge over Oakley Creek, which had just been replaced after washing out in 2023, was washed away again. Several shelters and civil defence centres had opened while I slept.
Many people who talked to reporters had the same question: 'Why weren't we warned?' In truth, we were. As ex-Tropical Cyclone Tam loomed before the holiday weekend, we received all the usual advice about tying things down and cleaning out guttering. We were even told there could be a thunderstorm or two on Friday evening. Thunderstorms, by their nature, are hard to precisely predict; the most you can generally do is say that the conditions exist.
MetService issued a warning about Friday's thunderstorms just after midnight, and it was reposted on Facebook by Auckland councillor Richard Hills, who had already lost electricity on the North Shore. Auckland Emergency Management, whose teams had stood down as Tam's winds eased on Friday, shared it around 2.30am, half an hour before the warning was due to expire. Most of us were asleep in our beds at the time.
Should the authorities have used their ability to turn our phones into emergency sirens? The residents of East Auckland, who had a mere 5mm sprinkle that night, may not have been impressed. But MetService, perhaps stung by the criticism, asked Auckland Emergency Management to do just that the following day.
I was in the fruit shop at 2.04pm, when everyone's phone went off with a message that blared 'URGENT ACTION REQUIRED' and warned of severe thunderstorms 'until 2.15pm?'
It was nearly two hours since I'd looked at the rain radar and posted to my friends on Bluesky that 'it's about to kick off again in Auckland. Out west, anyway.'
A second siren 20 minutes later extended the warning to 3pm, without the stray question mark. The weather event itself had not reached central Auckland and was leaving the region.
The alerts, however, were still with us. A third phone klaxon sounded at 6.39pm on Sunday, warning urgently of the potential for 'torrential rain' in the north, west and centre of the city.
But according to MetService's own radar, a long line of intense rain storms had already been ploughing down through the west and over the Manukau Harbour for an hour and a half. The front of it was nearly over Raglan. I messaged a friend there to tell him he had incoming weather.
For all the soul-searching after the events of 2023, it seems official agencies still haven't worked out how to tell us important things urgently.
Perhaps the system should focus more on risk – tenants and owners of flood-prone properties might be keener than the rest of us to sign up to be woken.
But it's hard not to feel there is something more broken in the system. And unless it's fixed, the risk is that we'll stop listening.