Auckland has woken up to a trail of destruction after a tornado ripped through the city’s waterfront on Monday night.
A 6.3 magnitude earthquake also struck Milford Sound as New Zealand felt nature’s full force in the space of a few hours.
Vehicles were hurled into the water, yachts were torn from their moorings, and several other boats either sank or capsized after a rare tornado tore through Auckland’s marina on a night of severe weather.
The wild weather event came after two consecutive nights of severe thunderstorms and heavy rain, with the rest of the country getting walloped by torrential downpours, heavy snow and high winds.
Auckland group Shadow & Shade captured the incredible event with a timelapse video and several photos, describing the moment the tornado struck as sounding like a “jet plane”.
Another Auckland resident said he saw a large boat drifting out to sea with its lights plunged into darkness, with tugboats apparently trying to retrieve it.
A MiNDFOOD.com reader whose apartment looks on to Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour said the sight outside her window was “insane”, and triggered flashbacks to when her family home in Canada was hit by a tornado when she was a child.
To cap off an unusual and potentially deadly night, a strong 6.3 earthquake rattled Milford Sound at a depth of 5km.
The quake was felt by thousands in the country’s south, and was detected as far north as the capital, Wellington.
Strong Earthquake strikes South Island: Read about it here https://t.co/nrAdfXRwy7 #eqnz pic.twitter.com/qH63rUZMIu
— GeoNet (@geonet) August 12, 2019
On Tuesday in Auckland, there was bright sunshine and light winds as morning commuters were greeted by strewn chairs, shipping containers and other large debris along the Viaduct marina and Wynyard Quarter areas.
It wasn’t the first tornado to wreak havoc in New Zealand on Monday.
Earlier, a twister made landfall near the Taranaki city of New Plymouth, while a large waterspout was spotted out to sea.
The tornado downed trees and damaged property, with one rural Taranaki resident breaking her collarbone in the chaos, according to Stuff.
On Sunday, Auckland endured its first of two consecutive nights of severe weather, with 500 lightning strikes recorded in the space of an hour.
That storm toppled around 20 shipping containers in the city’s main port and ripped part of the roof off The Cloud, an events and entertainment centre on the waterfront.
Large, spiky hailstones were reported in the West Auckland suburb of Henderson, with resident Bevan Weir sharing some of the specimens on Twitter.
Those were some chunky hailstones just now in Henderson, Auckland #hail pic.twitter.com/ZN3Y4Hztxh
— Bevan Weir (@BevanWeir) August 12, 2019
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