Buller, south of Karamea, is in for the long haul, with 66 hours of rainfall already under way and predicted to last until early Friday.
MetService has warned the rain is forecast to ease this evening, and then reintensify on Wednesday morning.
Two schools in the Eastern Bay of Plenty are closed this morning due to the weather.
The rural Te Wharekura o Ruatoki is closed due to localised flooding, according to a spokesman at Uzabus.
A GoBus spokesman said Tāneatua School, near Whakatāne, was the only school in its circuit closed today.
He said there were “issues” this morning on Stanley Rd with a tree that had come down but the driver managed to get the children to school by going the other way.
The spokesman said the team was concerned about high tide this afternoon in the Ruatoki area with rising river waters, and they were making a plan around getting the students home safely. Low tide is around 10.30am and high tide is around 4.30pm.
He said one of the options was picking the children up earlier as drivers would not drive children through flooding.
Wet week ahead
Auckland can expect low cloud and a few showers, MetService reports, with some possible heavy downpours about the afternoon.
However, the city will be back in the firing line from Wednesday, giving only a few days’ respite from the weekend’s downpours.
“For Auckland, Waikato, Waitomo, the central high country, Coromandel Peninsula, Bay of Plenty and the far north of Gisborne, there is moderate confidence of heavy rain on Wednesday and low confidence on Thursday,” MetService reported.
The Bay of Plenty has already been hit hard by the band of heavy rain yesterday, bringing down slips and a power pole that narrowly missed a motorcyclist.
Orange heavy-rain warnings remain in place for western parts of the Bay of Plenty east of Te Kaha and Gisborne north of Tokomaru Bay, as a feed of subtropical air moves southeastwards over the North Island.
In the 24-hour period to midday Monday, MetService recorded 278mm of rainfall at the Pinnacles Hut in the Coromandel Range.
At Tauranga Airport, it recorded 33mm in the 24 hours to 3pm, with the heaviest rainfall totalling about 8.2mm and coming between 9am and 10am. The rain station at Te Puke recorded about 30mm in 24 hours with Coromandel receiving 81mm.
In Tauranga, strong winds brought down a power pole narrowly missing a motorcyclist around 10.20am yesterday, said police.
A large tree fell on State Highway 2 at Bethlehem, between Te Paeroa Rd and Wairoa Pa Rd. The northbound lane was temporarily blocked while the tree was cleared.
Powerco said in a statement that extra crews were on the ground ready to make repairs and restore power to customers in the region.
MetService duty meteorologist Dan Corrigan said Bay of Plenty was “in the thick of it” as the rain band tracked towards East Cape.
Corrigan said the winds in the wider region, while “not awfully gusty”, had remained steady.
Tauranga, however, had been “quite windy” with the highest windspeed recorded at 60km/h.
The windspeed was hovering around 40km/h when he spoke to the Bay of Plenty Times about 3pm.
Corrigan said the heavy rain was expected to stall near the East Cape on Wednesday night before moving back west.
“We could see more heavy rain in the Western Bay of Plenty later in the week.
“There’s a fair bit of uncertainty about its backward path but our weather forecasters will be evaluating that in the coming days as we get more up-to-date observations.”
Corrigan said predicting the path of the storm depended on many factors including where and how winds met or diverged in the atmosphere and the amount of water vapour in the rising air.
The band of rain was expected to move eastwards over northern Tairawhiti/Gisborne overnight before moving back towards the west tonight. Orange heavy-rain warnings remain in place for these regions.
Orange heavy-rain warnings and watches are in place for West Coast and northwestern Tasman after MetService forecast bursts of heavy rain throughout the week as low-pressure systems roll in from the Tasman Sea.
A strong wind watch is also in place in Westland due to the expected strong northeasterly winds.
