Hail 15mm in diameter and 60 lightning strikes were recorded in Tauranga as thunderstorms rumbled through across the city.

An image sent to SunLive from the MetService show the core of the storm sitting over Tauranga at around 3pm yesterday.

Radar image from 3pm showing the heaviest rain and hail in white and green colours. Image: MetService.

MetService meteorologist John Law says the image shows the heaviest rain and hail shown by the white and green colours.

He says: 'The images along the top and right hand side give an idea of the vertical cross section of the storm. The top of the storm was around 6.4 km up.

'Looking at the lightning count over Tauranga yesterday we recorded almost 60 strikes, mostly from this storm and the one a few hours later. Hail sizes were in the region of 15 to 19mm.”

Sarah Burns, left, and Lana Beck created a snowman out of hail.

John adds rainfalls totals were not as impressive as the hail and lightning.

'The rainfall totals themselves aren't looking that great at the Tauranga Airport,” he says. 'There was only a couple of millimetres, but that could be because of the local nature of the storm and it didn't necessarily make its way to the station at the airport.

'The Kaimai Range got a little bit more - it could about 10mm in the last day or so.

'It was definitely intense but it didn't really reach all the stations which we would have liked.”

John says the weather is looking much more settled for today and for the rest of the weekend.

Renee Beck, left, and Emma Burns with their snowman.