Nawton cloud ignores MetService, rains on four streets for six hours straight

A single dark cloud has been parked over Nawton since about 9am Tuesday, raining steadily on roughly four streets while the rest of Hamilton enjoys a MetService forecast of "fine, becoming fine" and a weather app insisting it is 22 degrees.

Washing is out, then in, then out again. A freshly seeded lawn near the local dairy is, per its owner, "rooted, but what're you gonna do". The Tuesday school pick-up went ahead under umbrellas while parents in Dinsdale, one suburb over, stood about in jandals.

Deb Kapa, 58, who has lived in Nawton for thirty years, says she can see the sun from her letterbox. "Frankton's dry. Dinsdale's dry. I rang my sister in Chartwell and she's sunbathing! It's just us. It's like it's got a grudge."

Kayla, who does my flat white on Tuesdays and Thursdays and knows everything, reckons the cloud came in off the ring road — "or the bit of it that exists" — and simply stopped. A truck driver heading out to Ruakura told her it had followed him from the roundabout "like a dog". Kayla has started calling it Kevin. Kevin has been trending in the group chat since lunchtime!

A MetService spokesperson, contacted at the Auckland office where the forecast was written, said the outlook for Hamilton was "fine" and that Nawton was "in Hamilton". The forecast was therefore correct. Asked about the cloud specifically, the spokesperson said it "doesn't meet the threshold for a weather event" and was best described as "localised".

At time of filing the cloud is still there, and Deb has moved her washing to her cousin's line in Dinsdale, where it dried in forty minutes. The cousin has since drawn the curtains.