Improving MetService's severe weather forecasts to accurately predict freak destructive storms, such as the Auckland Anniversary downpour, will take "substantial and ongoing investment".
That's one of the key findings of a review by the country's official weather forecaster into its handling of the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle.
The review says in Auckland, the computerised weather modelling generally performed poorly.
Then despite meteorologists in the severe weather team making significant adjustments to compensate, the actual rainfall intensity and volume of water was still more extreme than they estimated.
MetService chief executive Stephen Hunt spoke to Guyon Espiner.
