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Thousands are without power, trees are down and others have had flood properties overnight as the worst of Cyclone Gabrielle battered the Waikato region.
Police were urging people to stay off the roads as highways had been strewn with branches and trees.
An on-ramp on SH1 at Tamahere was blocked due to a tree down while a family in Gordonton was trapped after a large tree fell across their driveway.
Is your property affected? Email news@waikatotimes.co.nz.
“People need to be mindful of the debris on the road, drive to the conditions and if they don’t need to be on the roads don’t go,” Senior Sergeant Andrew O’Reilly of Waikato police said.
READ MORE:
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* In pictures: Cyclone Gabrielle sparks flooding, broken trees, storm surges
* Cyclone Gabrielle: How it’s playing out across the North Island
Fire and Emergency attended hundreds of call-outs over the last 24 hours including flooding and a tree onto a house in the Waikato and another in Rotorua.
They also attended flooded properties in Thames-Coromandel District, a burst culvert in the Matamata-Piako District and sparking power lines in Taupō.
A car driving through waters in Whitianga, Coromandel, on February 13.
Power out for thousands
As of 6am Tuesday, 38,089 Powerco customers were without power, with the Thames/Coromandel area hardest hit with 15,497 customers affected.
Wel Energy, meanwhile, was reporting over 1000 properties without power in the Waikato district that included 877 properties northwest of Hamilton.
There were at least 1494 properties that had unplanned outages from Monday, the majority of them late at night.
Overall, Powerco had 48,705 customers impacted by the storm over the last 24 hours, the company said in a statement at 6.30am.
CHRISTEL YARDLEY/Stuff
Low-lying properties in Tairua started to flood on Monday as Cyclone Gabrielle approached.
Most of the outages have been caused by high winds and trees bringing down lines and reconnection efforts were hampered on Monday by the ongoing severe weather conditions as well as access issues meaning crews were unable to reach fault sites.
It’s expected that flooding, slips and road closures will continue to be an issue for crews trying to reach fault sites in the Coromandel on Tuesday.
A helicopter is on standby to help crews assess lines around the Coromandel, however flights are dependent on conditions easing.
With Cyclone Gabrielle moving down the North Island, outages in Bay of Plenty, South Waikato and Taranaki also occurred overnight on Tuesday morning.
There were 10,781 customers out in Taranaki and 3,602 without power in Bay of Plenty.
While all available crews will be reconnecting customers wherever possible, conditions remain challenging, and safety remains the top priority, the company said.
A summary of outages by region: Coromandel – 15,497 customers; Taranaki – 10,781; South Waikato – 7,053; Bay of Plenty – 3,602.
Intense rainfall about midnight
MetService meteorologist Lewis Ferris said the rain station in Golden Valley on the Coromandel recorded 150mm of rain in the 12 hours to Tuesday morning.
“There was a very intense period around midnight and in the hour up to 3am there was 28.6mm of rain. These were the figures we were most worried about because that was falling on what would have been incredibly saturated ground.”
A station in Whangamatā had 121mm in the same 12-hour period and they had an hour where they got 32.6mm.
“It even made it over to Paeroa where the station got 100mm last night. Their wettest hour was 13.2mm, that might not sound a lot in comparison but we classify anything over 6mm in an hour as heavy.”
Ferris said a few of their other stations on the top of the Coromandel like around the PInnacles would typically be the wettest but they stopped reporting at around 10pm.
Hamilton got around 30mm of rain overnight.
“There were hours of heavy rain last night between 9pm and midnight.”
Most of the big gusts happened before midnight and Slipper Island off the coast of the Coromandel recorded winds of up to 133kph but it was decreasing.
“There were other islands off the Coromandel that recorded winds of around 120kph. Not as impressive but Hamilton still got up to 75kph.”
Ferris said the weather will start to ease on Tuesday.
“There is still some rain around the Coromandel and parts of the Waikato but [on Tuesday] that will be easing. The wind will pull back more slowly. It does turn around to the southwest so will be a little bit more sheltered for parts of the Coromandel.”
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