Our “weather bomb” has gone off and it made quite a mess.

Scattered damage reports have come in to us from both sides of the North Island.  Wind gusts exceeded 100 km/h at New Plymouth, on the Manukau Heads and in Pirongia.  There were also a few reports of power outages in western Wellington as well as in Auckland around Torbay.

Comments coming into our web site and Facebook page told of windows rattling, howling winds and sideways rainfall.  Even I wasn’t immune to the effects of the storm as there were a few times it felt like my tiny office was going to get tossed and flipped as winds gusted to around 100 km/h.  Ross Tolland of Eltham lost a part of his fence.  Geoff Blackmore of Auckland shared with us a picture of tree that had gone down in his driveway.

Winds will continue to be quite strong early this morning but will start to ease off for the western sections of the lower NI and upper SI by mid-morning.  The rest of the lower NI and upper SI can expect the winds to ease off by noon.

Periods of rain will continue for the morning and afternoon, easing to showers by mid-afternoon.

By WeatherWatch Analyst Howard Joseph