Tree spears through Auckland house

Mother and son shelter in a cupboard as ferocious winds send a tree branch smashing into their living room.

Michelle McKenzie held her terrified little boy in her arms and told him to pray.

The 26-year-old and her 3-year-old son Christopher hid inside a cupboard in their Avondale home as a ferocious storm pummelled Auckland and the Bay of Plenty yesterday. It was a decision that may have saved their lives.

When it was quiet again, the pair emerged to discover a branch "speared from the roof right through the ceiling". It came to rest outside the cupboard where they were sheltering.

She couldn't believe what she was seeing.

Michelle McKenzie and son Christopher Swanepoel hid in a cupboard. Photo / Doug Sherring

"I saw that branch and I just thought 'what's happening?'. I started yelling out to the neighbours, I was scared something might happen again."

McKenzie took shelter in the lounge cupboard after getting a bad feeling about the noises being made by trees.

"They make big noises when there's wind but this was just a bit worse," a still-shaken McKenzie told the Herald on Sunday yesterday.

"This time it just felt not what it's supposed to feel like. It was like a rumbling. So we jumped in the cupboard."

The pair sheltered together as the house shook above them and they heard two loud bangs.

"That was the most scary bit, the shaking."

McKenzie wanted to cry, but held it in so Christopher wouldn't be frightened.

It didn't work.

"He said 'I'm scared, I'm scared' and I told him to pray.

"He closed his eyes and said 'Jesus, please just stop it' over and over."

The family was staying with friends last night while they figured out what to do, McKenzie said.

A multimillion-dollar clean-up continues after the storm that hit Auckland yesterday.

Heavy gusts of wind described as "mini tornadoes" wreaked havoc, ripping trees from their roots, lifting roofs from houses and tipping over light aircraft in Auckland. The gusts were so strong they blew over shipping containers at Ports of Auckland and several cars were crushed by falling trees.

Northern fire communications shift manager Scott Osmond said fire services were called to more than 100 weather-related incidents in Auckland in the space of two hours.

About 1500 homes and businesses lost power on Auckland's North Shore.

Three people were trapped in their Panmure home after a tree fell on to the property and emergency workers needed to haul the trio out of the windows.

Anita Dory, 25, was asleep in one room when she was woken up by a loud crashing sound.

"A huge pine tree fell through my roof and into the hallway. It was quite scary because the bricks from the house were falling down."

Dory suffered minor injuries after debris from the roof landed on her back.

In Mt Maunganui, strong winds ripped the roof off a garage and several buildings in Tauranga were damaged.

The weekend's storms are tipped to push insurance costs from two months of bad weather to the $100 million mark.

Sarah Knox, Insurance Council spokeswoman, said extreme weather events in May and June had already cost insurers about $48m.

That figure is expected to rise by tens of millions of dollars when claims from record flooding in Whanganui last month are totalled.