Cookie Monster. Pic/File
We were waiting for a terrifying Cookie Monster. We got a tame Fozzie Bear.
Many people in Tauranga might have woken this morning to just a few more leaves on the deck and be wondering what all the fuss was about and if the severity of the storm warnings was over-egged.
Ex-tropical cyclone Cook did not, as predicted, bring us the worst weather since 1968.
A check on rainfall and windspeed maximums showed the storm didn't bring many of the more dramatic upper-scale figures earlier feared.
Dire warnings about winds of more than 120km/h and potential flooding had instilled a sense of a looming apocalypse across the Bay.
When I arrived at work at lunchtime on Thursday, it seemed as if the city had been hit by a mysterious plague wiping out the population.
Shops and businesses closed early. Notices pinned on doors declared staff had left, "to be with their loved ones".
There was talk of getting home before "the eye of the storm". People said goodbye, whispering the words "stay safe" like an ominous mantra.
Supermarkets became churches of doom where people flocked in panic to act out their fears and empty the bread shelves. People pushed two trolleys at a time, stocking up on water, batteries and beer.
"A rabid zombie apocalypse and killer bee outbreak wouldn't pose as much of a supermarket shitstorm", quipped one local.
As the clock ticked down to the zero hour of 6pm, in our newsroom we discussed having an emergency generator and how we would get the news out "in a blackout and civil emergency".
I wondered if we also needed guns to stop looters or crazed zombies pressing themselves against the glass.
When the storm did bear down on the Bay, it hit Tauranga hard. The rain was deafening, and people started to post in their videos of swaying palms, and reporters in the field looked like they were standing in the wake of an angry water blaster.
Then it was gone.
The country had whipped itself into a frenzy ready for a wild storm, but got a damp fizz.
People were quick to satirise Cyclone Cook, calling it a non-event and overhyped.
On Facebook, one wrote:
"Needing urgent help. My clothes are mildly damp from the gentle rain, and I lost two leaves from my tree".
Another poster offered counselling "to those left unfulfilled and unaffected by Cyclone Cook's inability to perform under pressure."
While it is easy to criticise official warnings after the fact, we should be grateful for them.
It is no laughing matter to be in a civil disaster without water, medical supplies, food and light. We should all have an emergency kit ready for any eventuality.
This storm was a significant weather event for many parts of the country, meteorologists say.
As we report today, there were power outages, slips, closed roads, evacuations and flooding.
In the wake of what happened in Edgecumbe just a week earlier it is not surprising official warnings about Cook were intense.
It remains to be determined if the Edgecumbe flooding was the weather gods in action -or a preventable man-made disaster.
In my opinion, questions still need to be answered about the role the dam played, and if there was sufficient remedial action after previous floods.
Until then, this long weekend as well as sharing a laugh about Cook, we should be grateful that this time around the weather gods were kind.
We should be grateful we can put our gumboots and umbrellas away, stop dressing in unflattering high-vis windbreakers, and can chow down Easter Eggs, kick up a storm at the Jazz Festival, spend time with our families, and head down to the beach.
Cook has brought the Bay some heartache but it also brought some good things such as killer waves for surfers.
And not to forget the thousands of mysterious walnuts that washed up on Mount Beach.
Chocolate praline for Easter Sunday?
As the Cookie Monster would say,
"Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom".