State Highway 34 has reopened to one lane this morning as a tropically charged weather system continues to sweep through the region.
Earlier a slip had closed the road, 1km north of Valley Rd, Kawerau, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency said.
Stop/go traffic management is in place.
Whakatane District Council is also reporting power outages in Awakeri, Coastlands and Poroporo.
Two schools in the Eastern Bay of Plenty are closed this morning.
Te Wharekura o Ruatoki, a rural school in Ruatoki, is closed due to localised flooding, a staff member said.
It was a health and safety precaution as the roads usually flooded with heavy downpours and the school needed to ensure the safety of all students in the area and further out, he said.
Access to and from the school may be impacted by the heavy rain and “continual rain meant the flooding and risks were unpredictable.”
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 kids 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 currently 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.
The weather brought down slips in the Karangahake Gorge, forcing the closure of State Highway 2.
The gorge highway reopened under stop/go management on Monday evening.
At Tauranga Airport, MetService recorded 33 millimetres 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 the 24 hours to noon today, it recorded 278mm of rainfall at Pinnacles Hut in the Coromandel Range. The heavy rain warning for Coromandel expires this evening.
MetService duty meteorologist Dan Corrigan said the 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,” he said.
“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.
Motorists on SH2 were told to delay their journey or go another way after reports of a slip in the Karangahake Gorge.
An update on the Waka Kotahi journey planner website advised caution in the area after the slip, first reported about 12.45pm.
Both lanes of SH2 Karangahake Gorge were expected to be blocked for the rest of Monday between Albert St and Bush St.
Police were turning motorists around, and contractors were trying to clear the slip. Motorists were told to use the Thames Coast Road (SH25) if travelling to eastern Coromandel locations, or SH29 if travelling towards Katikati and Tauranga.
In Tauranga, strong winds brought down a power pole, narrowly missing a motorcyclist, on Turret Rd in Hairini around 10.20am, police said.
No one was injured but a lane was blocked until the downed pole was removed.
A large tree fell on SH2 at Bethlehem, between Te Paeroa Rd and Wairoa Pa Rd. The northbound lane was temporarily blocked while it was cleared.
About 680 households in Maungatapu lost power at 7.30pm but PowerCo said a cable fault was the suspected cause.
Powerco said in a statement that extra crews were on the ground ready to make repairs and restore power to customers in the region as the heavy rain bore down on the North Island.
Coromandel roading update:
The following roads are now OPEN:
Victoria Street, Thames
Wires Road, Hikutaia
Waiomu Valley Rd, Waiomu
Wentworth Valley Rd, Whangamatā
ONGOING CLOSURES:
Coromandel/Colville
Colville Road is CLOSED between Oamaru Bay and Koputauaki Bay (5km from the start of the road) due to an over slip . Estimated opening to one lane is midday today (2 May).
Mercury Bay
Bluff Road is CLOSED to vehicles due to a void that has formed near the bridge at the end of the road. Road is closed at the bridge at the west end of Rings Beach and does not impact resident access.
Thames
Tapu-Coroglen Rd remains CLOSED. Location is 10km from Tapu.
Tairua-Pāuanui
No closures
Whangamatā
No closures
Western Bay of Plenty District could have fewer councillors to vote for next election.