Rain Brings Limited Relief As Northland Continues To Dry Out

Thursday, 23 January 2025, 5:20 pm
Article: Susan Botting - Local Democracy Reporter

The storm that brought heavy rain across parts of Northland early this week (Monday 20 January) has done little to ease dry conditions facing the region’s west.

More than 100mm of rain fell on parts of Northland’s east coast in the storm.

But Northland’s west coast received half that or less, with Kaipara missing out and places including its Pouto Peninsula, getting barely a few sprinkles.

Northland Regional Council (NRC) natural resources monitoring manager Jason Donaghy said the storm’s rainfall had been variable.

“The recent rain has provided some relief to the east coast with rainfall exceeding 100mm in some places. The west coast did not receive a lot of rain,” Donaghy said.

The rain came just as NRC’s drought risk assessment for the region was released, highlighting increasingly dry conditions in a December climate report.

Monday’s rain has made limited change for most to its situation outline.

Its drought risk assessment is based on Northland’s rainfall, river flows and groundwater data, as well as its water resources.

Donaghy said there was limited rain on the horizon so Northlanders should still be conserving water, in spite of Monday’s rainfall.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said.

“People still need to keep up to date with any water restrictions and conserve water where possible.”

The report said the Far North was worst hit and classified as extremely dry, whilst the rest of the region was classified as very dry.

About 37% of NRC’s 51 monitored river sites were below their long term mean annual low flow. Thirty per cent of the region’s nine key aquifers were at low or very low levels – at Poroti, Whangārei and Ruakākā.

The report said limited rain over an extended time had resulted in a moderate meterological drought. The region’s rivers and groundwater levels were also in a slight hydrological drought.

Donaghy said many of east coast rivers water flows increased with Monday’s rain and would take a week or two to return to pre-Christmas flow levels.

West coast rivers would however be back to low flows within days.

The west coast’s Kaihu River provides drinking water for Dargaville and Baylys Beach where water use has been limited to the basic necessities of life since before Christmas, in the earliest Kaipara District Council (KDC) restriction introduction of its type in recent memory.

And KDC chief executive Jason Marris said further water restrictions were likely in the near future.

“Basically we need more rain in the streams and rivers to increase the flow and allow us to ease restrictions – until that happens, we need to continue to reduce our water use immediately, to make sure we all have enough for our basic needs,” Marris said.

Monday’s rain has made no difference for Kaipara’s west, where lower than expected rain and extremely low river flows are edging it closer to drought.

Northland Civil Defence ranks agricultural and water supply drought among Te Tai Tokerau’s top 10 hazards.

Federated Farmers Northland president Colin Hannah said the overnight rain had been beneficial, but time would tell how much impact it would have, depending on the coming weeks’ weather.

“One swallow doesn’t make a summer,” Hannah said.

“In fact, we could do with more rain around Whangārei district and south,” Hannah said.

The rain would have some impact on areas including Kaipara’s Dargaville and Mititai, along with the Kaitāia sand country and around Whangārei district’s Pipiwai which had browned off before it fell.

Areas such as Whangārei district’s Ngunguru and in the Bay of Islands were not as badly off beforehand, would however, be smiling as a result of the rain

Conditions were dry on his Te Kamo farm.

Monday’s 90mm of rain on his farm hadn’t made much difference to fertiliser spread on his property in October, some of which still hadn’t fully dissolved into the ground because of dry conditions.

Meanwhile, NRC’s Donaghy said Northland’s increasingly dry conditions does not mean the region is currently facing the prospect of another serious 2020-style drought.

This summer’s dry conditions were different from those leading into that drought.

Rivers were tracking at similar flows to 2020. But Northland’s water reserves for summer and into autumn were in better shape due to normal to above normal rainfall totals leading into the 2024/2025 summer.

Northland had experienced its driest year on record leading into the 2020 drought.

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