Cyclone Cook: The storm that was

Many people in the North Island will have woken this morning, noticed only a few leaves scattered about their streets, and wondered what the fuss was all about.

A check on rainfall and windspeed maximums showed Cyclone Cook didn't bring many of the more dramatic upper-scale figures earlier feared for many northern centres.

Those included potential a 150-250mm rainfall for Auckland, which instead received about 25mm across 24 hours to midnight (at North Shore); and similar warnings of 150 to 250mm for Coromandel, where Whitianga recorded 46mm up to midnight.

The maximum wind speed recorded in central Auckland was about 44km/h: well short of earlier suggested speeds of more than 120km/h that could have closed the Harbour Bridge.

But plenty of evidence showed Cyclone Cook was a significant weather event for many parts of the country, meteorologists say.

This could be shown by the thousands of homes without power in the Bay of Plenty and Hawke's Bay, and the major clean-up under way to clear closed roads and highways, or the flooding in Christchurch, caused by a swollen Heathcote River.

At White Island off the coast of Whakatane, winds gusted at over 200km/h; the Bay of Plenty Regional Council's wave buoy, 13km off Pukehina Beach in 62m of water, showed wave heights of around 4.7m - and one incredible spike of 12m at 6pm.

"I had a good look at this and the weather around that time and [it's] very possible," MetService meteorologist Lisa Murray said of the figure.

"We have also had reports about coastal inundation, which would back this up."

When Cook made landfall in the Bay of Plenty between 6pm and 8pm yesterday, the centre of the low was so large it covered an area stretching from Whakatane to Tauranga.

Although Cook was a tightly packed system, its pressure-crammed isobars fanned out across the wider Bay of Plenty.

The Bay of Plenty Regional Council's wave buoy shows a peak of 12.5m.

"This was Cyclone Cook all in a nutshell: the rainfall we received just prior to it was coming across from a separate low, which fed more moisture into the Cook system before it came down itself."

Although the Bay of Plenty only had 50 to 70mm of rain yesterday, it was very intense in the evening, when rainfall rates were up to 25mm in an hour.

Tauranga had 23mm of rain between 5 and 6pm, and gusts of up to 90km/h about 7pm.
Flood-hit Edgecumbe, where residents from 216 properties in the town's southwestern corner will be able to return home today, received about 50mm rain from midnight Thursday.

MetService's Whakatane instruments recorded maximum wind speeds of 100km/h, but Murray said higher speeds would have registered had they not been cut off when the town's power went out.

"I did a cross to the radio station there that was working off a generator trying to get the message out to people, and they were telling me [the wind] had increased at that time."

Hicks Bay in northern Gisborne and the Hawke's Bay coast all had gusts of about 150km/h, peaking about 9-10pm.

Gisborne was gusting up to 95km/h about 6pm.

The heaviest rain was around parts of the Gisborne ranges, where 100-130mm fell over an 18-hour period starting Thursday morning.

Napier Airport had gusts up to 100km/h, and peaked about 8-9pm, and gusts up to 150km/h were recorded on Cape Kidnappers.

Murray said it was unclear why, late yesterday, Cook had tracked slightly to the east, away from Auckland and Coromandel - such systems could be influenced by anything from upper troughs to local sea surface temperatures - but generally, it followed the course through the North Island that meteorologists had expected.

"Considering these systems can vary by thousands of kilometres, the track has actually been pretty good."

"But the greatest accomplishment was that people took heed, they battened down the hatches, brought their animals to safety and stayed indoors."

Official rainfall totals and maximum windspeed totals for North Island centres over 24 hours yesterday were: Whangarei 29mm/44km/h; Auckland (North Shore) 25.6mm/63km/h; Whitianga, 46mm; Thames, 48.6mm/57km/h; Tauranga, 72mm/87km/h; Whakatane 41.8mm/100km/h, (incomplete); Rotorua 50.2mm/70.2km/h; Gisborne 63.4mm/89km/h; Napier 24mm/100km/h; Hastings 28.6mm; Taupo 22mm/69km/h; Palmerston North 14.6mm/52km/h; Wellington 9mm 42km/h.