Intense rain on 27 January brought provisionally the wettest day ever recorded in Auckland, New Zealand, with a number of weather stations recording in excess of 200mm in 18 hours. The weather station of Auckland (Albany) recorded 260.6mm between 3am and 9pm and some parts of the city were hit with more than 150mm in the space of three hours, bringing severe flooding.
Maximum one-hour accumulations in the city reached 50 to 70mm, lasting for several hours. These totals amount to almost 300% of a normal January rainfall, and beat the previous record for the month of 206mm in 1986. This is not far off the all-time record for a month’s rainfall in central Auckland, which stands at 420mm in February 1869 (based on historical studies by Anthony Fowler in 2020). With more heavy rain expected, rainfall totals may reach or even break the monthly record by the end of the month.
