Residents in Auckland's Orewa were treated to a special water phenomenon across the horizon this morning, a keen photographer capturing pictures of a large waterspout.
Shortly after sunrise, Hibiscus Coast resident Grant Birley was out for his morning beach walk when he came across the "crazy" waterspout and decided to snap some pictures of it.
"I zoomed right in with my big lens... but if you were zoomed out you'd be able to see, just to the right of the camera out of the picture was the end of Shakespear peninsula," he said.
Birley said other morning beachgoers stopped to take a look but had to be quick as the waterspout began to disappear after only three minutes.
"The first image I captured was at 6.39am and the last image in my sequence was 6.40am at which stage it had started retracting back up and disappeared," he said.
Birley said he has a reputation in the area for trying to capture "crazy stuff," and is responsible for many beautiful pictures shared of bioluminesence in the area.
Birley said: "I've not seen anything as good as this, this is the best [waterspout] I've seen."
In October, MetService's lead meteorologist Stephen Glassey explained to 1News that a funnel cloud could form a water spout if it touches down on the water.
"Waterspouts occur over the water while tornadoes occur over the land," he said.
Glassey explained waterspouts are "generally weaker" than tornadoes, but boats should stay away from the spouts "because of the strong winds associated with them".
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