Wintry blast leaves trees down, snow on the hills

Wild weather has brought down trees and left some residents without power in the Rotorua region - while dropping temperatures saw Mt Tarawera dusted with snow.

Auckland was the area worst hit by Tuesday night's storm, with 100,000 homes and businesses without power as winds reached hurricane-like speeds of between 140km/h and 213km/h.

And while Rotorua got off relatively lightly in comparison, high winds did leave damage in their wake.

Image 1 of 14: Snow on Mt Tarawera. Photo/Karen Read

By midday yesterday treefalls on 12 roads were reported to Rotorua Lakes Council, including a tree that took out power lines on Okataina Rd.

And on Cecil Rd near Mamaku, a pine tree fell through power lines and across the road, leaving Abi Lister's home cut off and in total darkness from 1am.

When Lister went to drop her son at school yesterday she saw a concrete pole had fallen into three pieces and "there was a bloody great big pine tree in the way".

"I had to reverse home for two kilometres as there's no room to turn around."

She saw a Unison ute make its way up the road and her husband also tried to report the outage.

"He was on the phone for 40 minutes and gave up," she said.

A Unison spokesman apologised for the delays caused by high call volumes and the delay to restore power.

Snow could be seen on Mt Tarawera yesterday. Photo / Ben Fraser

"Rest assured our fault teams are working extremely hard in very challenging conditions to get power restored ASAP."

He said the Unison vehicle was there to assess the damage.

"This is to ensure that there were no live power lines on the ground, or there was no further danger to the public."

By 3.20pm Unison crews were at Cecil Rd, as were workers from Fulton Hogan, who were there clearing the road for the council.

Rotorua Lakes Council said it was alerted to the fallen trees at 1.22pm.

Meanwhile in Ranginui St, Ngongotaha, the Rika family were dealing with a fallen tree on their roof.

Richard Rika outside his Ngongotaha home after a tree crashed through its roof. Photo / Ben Fraser

"We heard a huge bang in the night and the house shook but we couldn't see what was wrong. There was no rain coming inside," Richard Rika said.

When he woke in the morning the damage was worse than he expected, and he got in touch with his insurers and an arborist.

"I am just happy nobody was hurt."

Nearby in Streamdale Pl a tree fell on a car in the storm.

A tree fell on a car in Streamdale Pl, Ngongotaha. Photo / Gloria Stafford

Sarah McGovern said she was shocked at the sight at the end of her cul-de-sac.

"Thank goodness it happened at night or else it could have been similar to the one in town [when a tree came down on Arawa St and killed motorist Trish Butterworth]."

The Ngongotaha Volunteer Fire Brigade was called out at 2.30am to clear trees that had fallen across passing lanes on State Highway 5, near the Tarukenga substation.

Chief fire officer Francis Boag said a crew spent an hour clearing the road.

According to the MetService website the worst of the weather seems to be over, with a mainly fine day expected today, and showers from the evening.

But it will still be cold, with overnight lows of 8C expected tonight, Friday and Saturday.

The weekend could go either way with showers forecast at this stage.