Power restored in Northland

Electricity has been restored to large areas of Northland and Auckland after stormy weather cut power to thousands of homes.

Trees falling on power lines cut electricity in Northland, Coromandel and Auckland's North Shore.

A spokeswoman for Vector said 6400 of its customers had experienced outages over the weekend but only 23 were still without power.

All the outages were weather-related, and staff would work until the lines were fully restored, she said.

About 9400 PowerCo customers and 4000 North Power customers also temporarily lost power, Radio New Zealand reported.

Phone lines were also cut, and "wire snaps" at 175 Northland homes could take several days to repair, a Telecom spokesman said.

The wild weather kept the Fire Service busy with more than 100 weather-related calls today.

Trees were blown down over roads in the Far North, Whangarei, Rodney, North Shore, Coromandel and Waikato by winds of up to 120km, northern communications centre shift manager Jaron Phillips said.

A high tide in Ruakaka, 29km southeast of Whangarei, was overflowing onto the road and causing problems, he said.

Firefighters were also called to two landslides, lifted roofs, a toppled shed and a carport tangled in powerlines.

The severe weather claimed the life of 15-year-old Danielle Anne Finlayson, who was killed early this morning when a tree fell on a caravan she was sleeping in.

The incident happened on a rural property at Whakapara, 23km northwest of Whangarei, at 12.50am.

One other person was in the caravan but managed to escape uninjured, Acting Sergeant James Calvert said.

Heavy rain and strong wind warnings for Northland and Auckland have been lifted but showers and gusty winds were still likely in exposed places, MetService forecaster Chris Noble said.

A deep low over Northland would move southeast then away from the North Island overnight, he said.

Heavy rain and gale force winds would continue in eastern Bay of Plenty and Gisborne tonight making driving hazardous.

Mr Noble said motorists should watch out for surface flooding, slips and felled trees and powerlines.

- NZPA