Heavy rain sparked evacuations in Spring Creek in April last year. Photo: RNZ / Samantha Gee
Marlborough District Council is expecting a reasonable amount of rain in the region over the next few days, but it is not likely to result in any major issues or evacuations for Spring Creek residents.
MetService has issued orange heavy rain warnings for the Tasman, Marlborough, Buller and Westland districts, from early on Thursday morning, as a deep low crosses the Tasman Sea.
Rivers and drainage engineering manager Andy White said there is a precautionary evacuation trigger level of 4000 cumecs and rising for the Spring Creek community, north of Blenheim, due to the compromised stopbanks that protect the town from the Wairau River.
Residents were told to evacuate during heavy rain last April - before the order was cancelled after less rain fell and the river did not rise as predicted.
At a public meeting last May, the council told residents that repairs to the stopbanks were a top priority, but came at a cost of $8.7 million and would take three years to complete, so precautionary evacuations during future storms were possible.
White said the council had received a number of enquiries from Spring Creek residents who were in a heightened state of alert.
"The good news for us is that it is relatively minor, we are expecting somewhere between 2000 - 3000 cumecs based on current forecasting and rainfall modelling."
White said that fell "well short" of the precautionary evacuation trigger level of 4000 cumecs, which was more likely to be a one in 20 year event.
"The residents of Spring Creek have nothing to be concerned about with this one, it is a relatively small flood for them and no evacuations will be needed. We will take a precautionary stance and continue to monitor through the rain event but we don't see any major issues."
He said nevertheless it would be a wet few days for the region, with the Wairau River predicted to peak around 3pm on Friday, and flood models to be updated throughout the night as new data came in from MetService.
"There is a reasonable amount of rain coming through for us, the hydrology team have been looking at the Rai Valley, it won't be an unusual event for them, something like they would see probably once a year, so it will be wet but we aren't foreseeing any major issues at this stage.
White said after a dry summer, the forecast heavy rain was the beginning of a typical autumn/winter season.
"It is a good opportunity to test all of our systems ahead of the winter rain."
He said this week's wet weather was not forecast to be a particularly sustained event, with the rain predicted to move through reasonably quickly.
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