#i'm very lucky where i live in an area buffered by mountains to the north

[ms-hells-bells]

we've had 4+ tornados hit towns in nz over three days, what a weird outbreak. luckily no one has been killed, but homes have been destroyed and a few people injured.

a tornado in tasman, a tornado or two in auckland, a tornado in taranaki, and a tornado in kapiti coast. earlier this year there has also been two tornados in the bay of plenty (well, one was actually twin land spouts that started as water spouts, but both came to shore and ripped up some houses).

and more tornados are likely to occur in the next couple days. big thunderstorms with 3000 lightning strikes an hour have hit in the past 24 hours. more upcoming for the next few days, including MORE flooding risk. the only lucky thing is that because supercells are rare here, most tornados are not from supercells, but from a basic thunderstorm formation that just has an unusually strong updraft (nowhere near US level), and so they're a lot weaker than american ones, only ef 0-1. but that's still enough to kill people in its direct path.