Wellington weather clean-up: ‘We had no idea it was going to be this intense’
Sunday, 19 April 2026
Wellington region mayors knew there was incoming weekend rain but say there was no way of knowing it was going to be of an intensity to inundate culverts, and flood homes and roads.
Homes and roads across Wellington were flooded on Saturday morning when a band of heavy rain, up to 40mm in an hour in some areas, swept across Wellington with Hutt Valley and Porirua seemingly in the firing line.
About 15 homes in Porirua were flooded and, over the hill in Hutt Valley, homes were evacuated with emergency hubs rapidly set up. Photos showed Stokes Valley under deep water.
Porirua mayor Anita Baker said stark warnings came ahead of Cyclone Vaianu, which ended up missing Wellington last weekend. But Saturday was a completely different picture. MetService had warned of heavy rain but “we had no idea it was going to be this intense”.
Read more:
Culverts and pipes could not cope with the sudden, heavy downfall. Pāuatahanui and parts of Plimmerton were under deep water and, around Porirua, 15 or 16 homes were flooded. One house was flooded for the fourth time in as many years.
Better warnings would have given homes time to prepare and it was “disappointing” these had not been explicit. But she did not blame Government forecaster MetService, which was dealing with an unpredictable situation.
The flooding was as bad as lower North Island flooding of 2004 - a February weather event Civil Defence rated as “one of the worst flooding disasters in at least the last 20 years”.
Hutt City mayor Ken Laban was at a dawn ceremony for the opening of Tupua Horo Nuku, shared path from Eastbourne around the coast to Seaview, on Saturday morning with no idea of the incoming downpour.
The situation went from “relatively normal to complete mayhem in an hour”, he said.
Emergency hubs had to rapidly set up with Stokes Valley notably hard hit and 24 families having to evacuate. Authorities were today checking people, especially those living alone, were okay.
There were almost no warnings, reflecting the “era of unpredictability and uncertainty” in current weather, he said.
Civil Defence Minister Mark Mitchell stood behind MetService and said intense local thunder storms were “bloody hard to predict”. He believed preparation done for Cyclone Vaianu the previous weekend meant areas were not as badly-impacted this weekend as they could have been.
“There is a bit of chit-chat about the boy who cried wolf. I completely disagree,” Mitchell said.
Wellington Region Emergency Management Office regional controller Carrie Mckenzie acknowledged concern about whether Saturday’s warning fully reflected the intensity of the incoming rain.
“While warnings are issued based on the best information available at the time, events can sometimes develop in ways that are difficult to predict with precision,” Mckenzie said.
Thunderstorms are inherently fast-forming weather events, which makes it challenging to predict precisely where they will occur and how intense they will become. In situations like yesterday’s, significant downpours can develop within as little as 30 minutes.“
Waka Kotahi NZTA on Sunday warned State Highway 58 between Hutt Valley and Paremata remained closed with flooding still affecting some areas. NZTA expects it to open again before 10am.
Wellington Water earlier warned that untreated, unscreened wastewater was discharged from the Moa Point sewage treatment plant via the short outfall pipe on Wellington’s south coast with the amount of rain too much for the longer, screened 1.8km, pipe to keep up.
But it later said this didn’t happen – though warned it may with more heavy rain coming on Sunday.
MetService meteorologist David Miller said Upper Hutt got 109mm or rain in 48 hours, while Porirua got 60mm and Lower Hutt got 54mm as a “very strong narrow line of convection” came through. Wellington Airport got just 25mm.
But the biggest downpours were 6am to 9am on Saturday with up to 40mm of rain falling in some areas in a single hour.
Anything above 25mm was seen as a localised downpour, he said.
Sunday could get the return of heavy showers in the afternoon and evening.