An Auckland woman was jolted out of bed last night by a sound like a bomb going off.
Jane Homer said she and her daughter were woken about 4am this morning by a "huge bang" as her house shook from the impact of a 6m tree coming down.
"We were jolted out of bed and out of sleep. We rushed into the front room. It was scary. It was like a bomb going off," she said.
"I thought we'd been hit by lightening. The house was shuddering."
She looked out the window of her house on Koraha St, Remuera to see a tangle of tree branches surrounding about three quarters of her house, covering the windows and blocking one of her doors.
With the rain pouring down, she dared not go outside to check out the damage. She expected water to start pouring through the ceiling but it never came.
After deciding there was no immediate danger and nothing that could be done in the pouring rain in the middle of the night, she managed to get back to sleep.
It wasn't until the morning Homer realised how lucky she had been.
A tree about 6m tall had been uprooted by a combination of the wind and sodden ground.
One large part of the trunk just missed the house and the other large part broke some guttering but did no damage to the roof or cladding.
"The tree man said we were very, very lucky," she said. "I'm relieved now but I was very worried at the time."
Contractors were at her house early this morning and had the tree cleared up by midday.