Floods and Flood Warning in New Zealand

New Zealand suffers from regular floods, these being the most common source of insurance claims for damage from natural hazard events in the country. This paper describes the origin and distribution of the largest floods in New Zealand, and describes the systems used to monitor and predict floods. In New Zealand, broad-scale heavy rainfall (and flooding), is the result of warm moist air flowing out from the tropics into the mid-latitudes. There is no monsoon in New Zealand. The terrain has a substantial influence on the distribution of rainfall, with the largest annual totals occurring near the South Island's Southern Alps, the highest mountains in the country. The orographic effect here is extreme, with 3km of elevation gained over a 20km distance from the coast. Across New Zealand, short duration high intensity rainfall from thunderstorms also causes flooding in urban areas and small catchments. Forecasts of severe weather are provided by the New Zealand MetService, a Government owned company. MetService uses global weather models and a number of limited-area weather models to provide warnings and data streams of predicted rainfall to local Councils. Flood monitoring, prediction and warning are carried out by 16 local Councils. All Councils collect their own rainfall and river flow data, and a variety of prediction methods are utilized. These range from experienced staff making intuitive decisions based on previous effects of heavy rain, to hydrological models linked to outputs from MetService weather prediction models. No operational hydrological models are linked to weather radar in New Zealand. Councils provide warnings to Civil Defence Emergency Management, and also directly to farmers and other occupiers of flood prone areas. Warnings are distributed by email, text message and automated voice systems. A nation-wide hydrological model is also operated by NIWA, a Government-owned research institute. It is linked to a single high resolution weather model which runs on a super computer. The NIWA model does not provide public forecasts. The rivers with the greatest flood flows are shown, and these are ranked in terms of peak specific discharge. It can be seen that of the largest floods occur on the West Coast of the South Island, and the greatest flows per unit area are also found in this location.