From normal to ‘complete mayhem’: Wellington flooding worst since 1976, few warnings
Monday, 20 April 2026
The year was 1976. Fifty years on, Neil Baker can recall the floods that ravaged Stokes Valley in Lower Hutt. Saturday’s deluge proved to be the closest contender.
Saturday morning’s sudden burst of rain, up to 40mm in some hours, caught mayors off guard and pivoting to an unexpected emergency after few warnings of the severity of the incoming downpour.
At Tawhai St in Stokes Valley, Lower Hutt, Baker said the first warning he got was a few cracks of lightning about 8am. He checked the rising stream out the back and, when he got back to his driveway, it was a brown torrent of water.
The water came just 10mm from flooding his garage and about 300mm from the house he had lived in for 40 years.
Read more:
“There was twice the volume of water we have had in 40 years,” he said.
It was 1976, when he was living just up the hill with his parents, when the infamous storm of that year swept through. A report from the time shows there was extensive damage as heavy rain fell over a long period causing landslides, severe flooding and “scouring of private properties”.
Baker said 1976 was the worst he had seen but April 18, 2026 took the second spot.
Hutt City mayor Ken Laban was at a dawn ceremony for the opening of the Tupua Horo Nuku shared path from Eastbourne around the coast to Seaview on Saturday morning with no idea of the extent of the incoming downpour.
The situation went from “relatively normal to complete mayhem in an hour”, he said.
Emergency hubs had to be rapidly set up with Stokes Valley notably hard hit and 24 families having to evacuate.
There were almost no warnings, reflecting the “era of unpredictability and uncertainty” in current weather, he said.
Over the hill, 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”.
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 weather event.
Civil Defence Minister Mark Mitchell stood behind MetService and said intense local thunder storms were “bloody hard to predict”.
Wellington Region Emergency Management Office regional controller Carrie Mckenzie acknowledged concern about whether Saturday’s warning fully reflected the intensity of the incoming rain.
Thunderstorms were inherently fast-forming events, which made it challenging to predict precisely where they would occur and how intense they would become, Mckenzie said.
“Significant downpours can develop within as little as 30 minutes.“
MetService meteorologist David Miller said Upper Hutt got 109mm of 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 of rain.
But the biggest downpours were 6am to 9am on Saturday with up to 40mm of rain falling in some areas in a single hour.