The bulk of King’s Birthday weekend brought sunny skies and warm temperatures to Hawke’s Bay, but a jolt of heavy rain and thunder on Monday acted as quite a shock for many.

Varying rainfall totals between 9-17mm were recorded for inland areas and town centres in the region during a 24-hour period from Monday.

The heaviest rainfall levels ranging from 60-87mm occurred in the hills and around the forest ranges. This was mainly at the northern reaches of Hawke’s Bay towards the upper East Coast, Lake Waikaremoana and Wairoa.

Niwa forecaster Chris Brandolino said the cause of the downpour was likely due to two battling weather systems that have created an onshore flow.

 “We’ve had an area of low pressure. Low pressure has been spinning and has moved north from the Tasman Sea and now it’s located northeast of Cape Reinga.

“We also have an area of high pressure south to southwest of the Fiordland National Park and those two systems sort of act like a cog.”

MetService meteorologist Alain Baillie said there’s still some gloomy weather on the horizon.

“The next few days are going to be pretty showery by the looks of it,” Baillie said.

While rainfall totals aren’t set to reach Monday’s levels there may still be another spell of heavy rain coming at the latter end of the week as well as scattered showers.

“There might be a short period of heavier rain overnight Friday going into Saturday, but that then clears everything out.”

On a more positive note, Baillie noted that temperatures are set to be warmer than average throughout the week.

“It’s going to be very cloudy so it’s not going to cool down much overnight,” he said.

“If we look at Napier for example, the average overnight temperature is about 5C, and for the rest of this week it’s going to be 10 plus.”

Day average temperatures are set to range between 15-17C.