Heavy rain has made driving conditions difficult and caused road closures in the central part of New Zealand today.
While rain has eased in Nelson and Marlborough the wet weather has moved north, causing surface flooding and slips in the Wellington region, where one slip caused a commuter train to derail and be hit by another coming the other way at Plimmerton, north of the city.
All roads in the Nelson City Council area had now reopened except for Kokoroa Road and no further flooding was expected, Nelson City Council senior project manger Shane Davies said.
It was no longer raining heavily and river levels were dropping, Mr Davies said.
Marlborough roads asset manager David Miller said State Highway 6 between Havelock and Rai Valley, 40km east of Nelson, which was closed after the Pelorus River burst its banks, would hopefully be reopened later this afternoon.
While rain was easing in the region there had been further slips in Marlborough, one causing the closure of the Port Underwood road about 1.30pm, Mr Miller said.
New Zealand Transport Agency, central operations manager Mark Owen said rain was causing delays due to surface flooding and slips around Wellington.
A slip on SH1 south of Tawa could result in traffic being reduced to one lane and slips were also causing delays on SH2 just before Petone and SH58 near Whitby in Porirua, Mr Owen said.
Stuff.co.nz was also reporting that a house in Wellington suburb of Melrose was at risk of sliding down a hillside after it slipped from its foundations.
A spokesman for Wellington police said they were responding to a high volume of weather related incidents
MetService said heavy falls of rain in the lower North Island and upper South Island were expected to gradually clear by this evening.
Some heavy falls were also expected in Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty and Taupo tonight and these were expected to gradually clear tomorrow.
Environment Waikato (EW) was continuing to monitor river levels in the region closely after warnings that up to 60 to 90mm of rain could fall in the upper catchments of the Waikato and Waipa rivers in 24 hours.
"The levels of the rivers haven't reacted yet to the rain that's fallen so far. In fact, they're continuing to decline a bit after last week's weather," said EW emergency management officer Adam Munro.
"However, if we get the rain that's forecast it's possible rivers will still rise significantly and there could be some flooding of land near to the rivers, although we can't predict at this stage exactly how much and where this might occur," Mr Munro said.
Meanwhile in the Bay of Plenty, Whakatane District Council has said the prolonged wet weather was causing drainage problems in some sections of Matata including the children's playground.
New Zealand Mountain Safety Council (MSC) urged people to delay trips into the outdoors until the bad weather cleared.
"We strongly recommend people defer any trip into the outdoors in the worst affected areas until weather conditions have improved," MSC manager Chris Tews said.
