Three months of rain already

3rd February 2010

One month into the year we've had a quarter of our annual rainfall, Metservice figures for Masterton show.

January saw rain on sixteen days, totaling 194 mm for the month, compared to a past average of 57mm, and an annual of 897mm.

The heaviest day of rain saw 84mm fall in Masterton on January 22 alone.

Masterton plumbers were again busy with an unseasonal shower of calls for help after more heavy rain over the weekend. Sunday saw 14.6mm fall in Masterton.

Oakley Plumbing's Craig Oakley also said he had several call outs to blocked gutters. "It can flow back inside and flood the ceiling and flow down into the house. It can cause permanent damage, but no guttering system can handle some of the volumes we've had recently."

Masterton Plumbing's David Leigh said he'd cleaned up a couple of floods in buildings after spouting overflowed into buildings. Mr Leigh said almost all of the flood damage callouts he deals with could be avoided if gutters were cleared regularly.

"People don't worry about it until it rains and then it comes down on them. It's basic maintenance, everyone should be doing it."

Masterton District Council CEO Wes ten Hove said the council had 19 calls about flooding in the last few weeks.

"On Thursday we had more than 40mm in about half an hour, so it was a very substantial cloudburst over a narrow area," he said.

"The catchment won't be designed to cope with that sort of volume, but it drains away fairly quickly."

Only a couple of the calls were about surface flooding entering buildings, and another couple where it threatened to, he said.

There had been some damage and flooding on Jetty Road at Castlepoint after rainfall on January 21 when debris jammed up a culvert, he said.

Mr ten Hove said there had also been a few slips and dropouts on rural roads.

Many of the calls were from people concerned about motorists driving through large puddles, which were then washed up onto properties. Many people had requested road warning signs Mr ten Hove said.

"Motorists need to slow down through puddles, if the water is ponding on the road it's a safety issue and it's not good to create a bow-wave washing up people's driveway and washing away mulch," he said.

National Institute of Water and Atmosphere climate scientist Andrew Tait said "January was very unsettled, with the passage of lots of fronts and a lot of low pressure systems that led to more rain than usual, and more southerly's have made the weather colder than normal.

He said NIWA predicted the current cool El Nino pattern would continue until Autumn, but the February to April rainfall was likely to be in the normal or below normal range in the east of the North Island.