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Three tornadoes hit the North Island yesterday, leaving trails of destruction in New Plymouth, southeast Auckland and Tauranga.
Early this morning a couple of mini-twisters also tore through Whakatane, lifting roof tiles.
Police in New Plymouth said it was amazing no one was killed or injured when the twister tore through the city about 1pm.
Two and a half hours later, another tornado struck the Auckland suburb of Botany, damaging several homes.
And at 5.30pm a smaller twister hit in Tauranga.
In the South Island, bitterly cold southerly winds chilled Southland and Otago yesterday as a surge of polar weather moved across the country.
New Plymouth
The tornado ripped off a roof, squashed cars, smashed windows and threw debris around the city centre.
New Plymouth Fire Service senior station officer Trevor Moore said the fire service responded to a sprinkler going off about 1pm at Placemakers just outside the downtown area.
"When we arrived clearly there had been significant building damage and the sprinkler system had been carried away by the roof."
About half the building's roof had been ripped off.
Another six commercial buildings and several cars were also damaged by the tornado.
"Quite a few cars had bits and pieces damaged where debris had fallen on them. On one I saw, the roof was squashed right down to the seats."
Gillian Kiss was in her friend's furniture store when the tornado hit.
"All we did is just grab each other and duck down because the feeling was the roof was going to go on top of us," she said. "Then it was gone.
"We came out and just looked in shocked horror at the damage, it was incredible. I'm very ready for a stiff brandy."
Taranaki Racing Club chief executive Carey Hobbs said some staff were about to leave the club's lunchroom to go outside when the tornado hit the building.
"We were probably 10 or 15 seconds away from a disaster," he said.
"There's been an enormous amount of flying glass, and we are very lucky no one has been hurt."
Auckland
The Botany tornado struck up to 25 homes in four streets.
The Fire Service's northern communications centre shift manager, Scott Osmond, said at least nine houses in the small street of Montecito Place had roofs damaged.
One person was taken to Middlemore Hospital for treatment after being hit by falling roof tiles.
Janelle Handa was on the phone to a friend about 3.30pm "when everything went dark and there was an almighty noise".
Ms Handa said she "didn't notice it too much" until she looked outside to see a 20m section of her 2m-tall back fence snap off and slam into the rear of her home.
"We were very, very lucky it didn't come flying through the windows."
Another neighbour, Christine Kohlhase, said the tornado lasted no more than a minute "but it was intense and quite frightening".
"It was like being in an earthquake ... it was so loud and you could see pot plants and tiles flying around and debris everywhere."
The deputy chief fire officer for the Manukau district, Andy Clarkson, said the tornado cut a path through four streets.
Tauranga
One resident said she was at home about 5.30pm when the skies darkened and the winds suddenly picked up, ripping tiles from the roof of a neighbour's house.
The tornado then hit her own backyard, throwing garden furniture against a fence.
Tornadoes in NZ
MetService spokesman Bob McDavitt said that, based on the damage it caused, the New Plymouth tornado was at the lower end of the scale.
It and the Auckland tornado were probably about 10m wide and travelling about 100km/h.
MetService severe weather forecaster John Crouch says coastal areas around New Plymouth are a "hotspot" for tornadoes.
Yesterday's tornado sprang from an unstable northwesterly flow on to the coast, which had been spawning bands of thunderstorms.
The western side of the North Island was the second most likely area to get tornadoes, after Westland, Mr Crouch said.
"Anywhere from Auckland, Waikato, right down to the Kapiti Coast."
New Zealand gets at least 30 tornadoes a year, including an average of four in the Taranaki region.
- additional reporting: Newstalk ZB
