© stuff.co.nz
MetService says the loud bang was probably thunder, but not all locals are convinced.
MetService says the loud bang was probably thunder, but not all locals are convinced.
Police and MetService say it was likely just thunder, but residents aren't so sure.
One local believed it could have been a meteor, another thought it was an earthquake, while a third believed a "sonic boom" was the cause.
Helen Lynam wasn't convinced that it was thunder. "It was loud and like a boom/bang sound. I didn't think it was thunder, it didn't have that sort of sound to it."
A member of the Tauranga Weather Facebook group said her pets had been "going weird" in the moments before the noise was heard.
Comment: Monday's storm is one of the deadliest on record in the Russian capital. Nine people died and 165 were injured in the city in a similar disaster in 1998, while at least nine people were killed in a storm in 1904.
"Winds gusted as high as 70 mph during the storm, which is rare for Moscow," said weather.com meteorologist Brian Donegan. A top emergency official said that 60,000 people in Russia's Stavropol region are being evacuated due to the threat of flooding.
Update 30 May 2017, 21.30 CET
The latest figures place the death toll at 16, with at least another hundred people injured, and the number of fallen trees at 27,000. And it was all over in just ten minutes...
This was therefore the worst storm to hit Moscow in living memory, and probably the worst since the 19th century.