Caravan flips and building damage after tornado hits Far North

Wednesday, 5 June 2019

Met Service radar imagery suggests the tornado hit the Coopers Beach area of the Far North district at about 10.37am. Blue indicates moderate rain, while red indicates heavy.

Tornados have been causing chaos in the Far North, with roofs ripped from buildings and caravans flipped.

Did you see a tornado? Send us an email or call 09 374 4752.

A building inspector ran for his life after a tornado struck the Far North.

A tornado near Kaipara reportedly flipped a caravan onto its roof.

And Dave Currie, a building inspector at Coopers Beach, ran for his life after an earlier tornado formed while he was inspecting a house on Torsby Rd.

Watch as lightning strikes the tip of the Sky Tower during an Auckland storm.

'I could hear this roar coming from the beach and the next minute there's debris flying through the air and the wind was howling - I made a dash for the house,' he said.

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The tornado ripped apart a carport and sent bits of roof flying 'all over the place', Currie said.

It affected about two to three houses on State Highway 10, which had their roofs taken off, but the flying debris caused much wider damage to the area, such as broken windows, he said.

Debris blew right up the valley, causing 'considerable' damage, Currie said.

'It was quite incredible but it was all over within a minute, or a minute-and-a-half,' he said.

Construction engineer Alex Clarke snapped this photo of a tornado in Ruakaka once 'the coast was clear'. It had blown through a site he was working on about 12.30pm.

Doug Newson, who worked at Coopers Beach Sports said there was a 'really big gust of wind' which lasted between two to three minutes.

'It just blew everything.'

Newson said the gust left trees bent, while the sky turned inky-blue in colour.

'The sky changed a really indifferent colour. It's hard to explain, a really amazing deep colour and then all of a sudden we really copped something.'

Lightning strikes, gale-force winds and torrential rain buffeted Northland and Auckland today, but forecasters are warning Wellingtonians to batten down the hatches as the worst of the weather moves towards the capital.

He said rain was blown about a metre and a half into the building.

The wind had since cleared 'a considerable amount', leaving just light showers and wind.

Santosh Khanduri, who works at the Four Square on SH10 in Coopers Beach, said he saw a 'small tree' being pulled out of the ground by the wind as he left his house for work.

'I felt like the whole building was shaking. It was too windy.' Other reports said a roof had been ripped off a building.

MetService meteorologist Peter Little said it was likely a tornado hit the Coopers Beach area about 10.37am.

It was hard to know for sure if it was a tornado, he said, as radar images are recorded every seven-and-a-half minutes. It was likely the tornado occurred between images and didn't last very long.

The tornado would have began as a water spout that moved onto land, he said.

'We had a severe thunder storm alert out which included the risk of tornadoes. It looks like there has been one which caused localised damage.'

There was also some heavy rain and a 'band of active thunder storms'.

Construction engineer Alex Clarke, 35, was on his lunch break at a work site in Ruakaka when a tornado blew through about 12.30pm.

He described the event as 'hair-raising' and said the tornado shook the portable buildings the workers were in.

'It was rattling them around something crazy.'

A neighbouring farm had a couple of sheds blown over and trees ripped from their roots, Clarke said.

By 1.16pm, Northland had 219 lightning strikes, while Auckland had been hit by 91, Little said.

'It is a significant amount of lightning, there's a lot of thunderstorms.

'Currently the main band of rain is moving over Auckland, but within the next hour or so it should clear up and we may even see some sunshine.'

FENZ spokesman Andrew Morrison said 'extensive damage' had been caused by the tornado to 12 houses in Coopers beach.

'The damage ranges from minor to more major with a roof being lifted off a house.

'Search and rescue teams have been deployed to the area, there's no injuries that have been reported and we have two appliances at the scene.'

Police and Civil Defence were also at the scene, he said.

A shed near Kaiwaka had been 'scattered' by what he thought could have been a second tornado.

However, it was not as severe as the Coopers Beach tornado, he added.