Storm victims are today counting the cost after Cyclone Cook flooded homes, cut power to thousands of people and closed four state highways.
Thursday night's extreme weather left residents cleaning up their flooded properties while contractors worked to clear large slips and downed trees blocking highways 29, 2, 33 and 30.
Homes in Hartford Ave, Grenada St, and Harris St flooded, and residents spent yesterday pumping water away and salvaging what they could.
Arataki homeowner Heather Kupa has had "a gutsful" after being flooded twice in a week.
Heavy rainfall flooded the garage and a spare bedroom of her Harris St property.
"The fire brigade came last time to empty out all the water, but the water keeps coming up through the ground as the water table is so close to the level of my garage door," she said.
"As fast as they pumped the water out it keeps filling up."
Metservice recorded a total rainfall of 63.6mm in Tauranga between 9am and 9pm Thursday. The peak was between 5pm and 6pm when 22.8mm fell. Wind gusts reached 87km/h in Tauranga while Whakatane experienced gusts of more than 100km/h before the weather station stopped transmitting at 7pm.
A buoy recorded a 12m wave 13km off Pukehina coast, and a boat broke from its Pilot Bay mooring and washed ashore.
Tauranga and Western Bay councils logged 314 service requests on Thursday and yesterday. These included 188 sandbag requests, 27 calls for flooding on properties (not dwellings), 18 parks (trees, etc) and 18 roading.
Large ocean swells damaged Mauao base track, and new slips were also recorded, prompting the city council to close the popular reserve for most of yesterday.
At Omokoroa, Kowhai Grove couple Jody Sawyers and her partner Rhys Bradford packed up and moved to a motel after an estimated 5000cu m of soil slipped away from their home last Friday.
Ms Sawyers said since the first slip they had lost "quite a bit more" of their back section and the slip area was constantly "moving".
Firefighters from Mount Maunganui to Opotiki attended more than 100 weather-related call outs between 6pm and 9.30pm on Thursday.
Police were called to 98 weather-related emergencies in the Bay, and 250 nationally.
These included a crash involving two cars and a power pole on Welcome Bay Rd about 6pm on Thursday. The collision downed the power pole, which was held up by a crane for most of yesterday but not believed to be responsible for the power outage that plunged hundreds of Western Bay of Plenty homes into darkness on Thursday night.
A total of 406 homes in Welcome Bay, Matakana Island, Papamoa east, Te Puke, Waihi and Tauranga lost power. Power was expected to have been restored to most homes by 6 o'clock last night.
Powerco network operations manager Phil Marsh said the company hoped to reconnect most affected households yesterday although flooding and the heavy ground was causing access problems in a couple of locations.
"Fortunately we avoided the brunt of the storm and the impact on our network was not as severe as anticipated," he said.
Te Puke suffered the worst damage with trees bringing down high-voltage lines and affecting power supply to about 350 customers. Matakana Island was also affected with 180 customers losing power although electricity was restored to all but 20.
Metservice said the storm tracked further east than expected, which meant eastern Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and Hawke's Bay were worst affected. Auckland and Wellington escaped the worst.
Although a region-wide state of emergency was lifted yesterday, it remained for Whakatane which also suffered a major power outage and slips.
Whakatane Mayor Tony Bonne called for people to conserve water and only flush the toilet if they had to because the town's sewage pumps were not working.
He pleaded to Ohope residents: "Please don't even use the water if you can. We've got a major break at the top of Ohope Hill caused by a big tree coming out and ruining the pipe."