Auckland has experienced its wettest January since records began, while temperatures plummet in southern US
Workers clear a road blocked by a landslide after a heavy downpour and flooding on the outskirts of Auckland on 1 February.Workers clear a road blocked by a landslide after a heavy downpour and flooding on the outskirts of Auckland on 1 February.Last modified on Fri 3 Feb 2023 10.04 GMTin the past week with a one-in-170-year flooding event hitting Auckland.
These totals are more than 8.5 times higher than a typical January, and more than 2.5 times higher than an entire typical summer. Overall, Auckland has seen the wettest January since records began, with more than half a metre of rain falling in places. The rainfall has caused numerous landslips, flooding and damage to roads and properties with four people killed and 350 in need of emergency accommodation.
Last weekend in the US, a strong cold front progressed southward into Texas, with sites in Oklahoma recording a 10-20F drop in temperature within an hour. Cold air lingered at and near the surface in the Southern Plains into this week, but south-westerly flow at higher altitudes advected warmer air over the top of this shallow cold layer.
This combination helped produce freezing rain, a phenomenon where rain becomes supercooled through the cold surface layer, landing and turning to ice as it hits any surfaces. The freezing rain coated roads and weighed down trees with a glazing of ice, causing many road accidents. Where the cold layer was slightly deeper, the droplets froze into ice pellets, with “thundersleet” observed in Dallas, Texas earlier this week.
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