There is nothing better than a little “Sky TV” out the window.

A 10-year-old Napier girl with a camera was among thousands watching a dramatic storm engulf the twin towns of Hawke’s Bay on Friday afternoon, causing torrential downpours and hail, and even the start of a small tornado.

For Leah Te Whata, the highlight was lightning, specifically an almighty lightning bolt that jumped out of a Poraiti Rd vector with a crack just as she started filming.

The severe thunderstorm brought heavy downpours of 16.8mm in 10 minutes in Napier, inundating some streets in Onekawa and Taradale.

MetService recorded a total of 2,000 lightning strikes as temperatures rose from 17 degrees Celsius to 9 ° C in 20 minutes.

Fire and emergency services responded to a handful of calls regarding the storm, with several reports of flooding in Napier around 4 p.m. Friday.

A spokesperson for New Zealand’s firefighters and emergencies in Wellington attributed reports of flooding inside buildings to “gutters unable to handle them.”

Napier resident Chloe Foster also captured a time lapse of stormy skies as she took her children to their evening bath, dinner and bedtime routine.

Foster’s son Dylan, who just turned three, loves a good thunderstorm and has made his own home theater out of the thunderstorm theater.

“I was already making Dylan’s bath when the storm came. So I put my phone on the windowsill to record a lapse of time and put it in the bath.

“He asked me to turn off all the lights so we could watch the lightning and we were counting the seconds until the thunder came. My phone stopped recording when we had a really loud thunder that went on. rocked the house and my phone fell, ”Foster mentioned.