North Island battered by 10,000 lightning strikes in one night

In a record of sorts, the upper North Island witnessed about 10,000 lightning strikes through the night and in Auckland alone there were as many as 1300 strikes between midnight and 6am. In the opinion of a Metservice meteorologist, it was a "pretty intense event".
This has been reported in nzherald.co.nz dated 22 November 2015.

The detectors had recorded over 3500 strikes in two hour periods and these were of high intensity. As a result, more than 2000 homes in Auckland - including 1600 in Birkenhead - lost power during the severe weather as trees fell on power-lines which was the main cause of the trouble.
There were strong wind gusts and heavy rainfall with the wind gusts reaching speeds of 128Km/h at Manukau Heads and about 96Km/h at the Harbour Bridge. Portions of the Coromandel saw 34ml of rain in an hour overnight and, in Auckland, Albany there was about 12ml of rain in the hour after midnight.
The freak weather event was attributed to the warm air moving across the country from Australia ahead of a cold front coming in underneath.

(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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