At least four people died and about 350 needed emergency accommodation on Friday due to worst downpour on record. A state of emergency has been declared in Auckland according to BCC. The mayor of Queenstown also declared a state of emergency for the town
Much of the country faces severe weather warnings for the weekend – ahead of the school holidays. In some places, rain of up to 120mm was expected to accumulate by midnight Friday along with snow in some higher areas.
According to RNZ, heavy snow warnings were also in place for Mackenzie Country and inland Canterbury, Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes north of a line from Wanaka to Ranfurly, until late Friday night.
The Aussie Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has said that these floods are “a 1-in-100-year weather event, and we seem to be getting a lot of them at the moment. I think people can see that there’s a message in that… Climate change is real, it’s with us,”
Apart from other factors contributed to flooding, a warming atmosphere caused by climate change, which increases the intensity and frequency of extreme rainfall, is also being attributed to the recent floods in New Zealand.
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