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A tornado ripped through the home of an elderly Franklin couple yesterday, tearing off their roof and destroying the inside of the house.
The storm that hit New Zealand this weekend cut electricity to around 45,000 people across the country, and bowled over hundreds of trees. A flight was forced to turn back to Wellington after being hit by lightning.
A teenage girl was admitted to hospital with neck injuries and facial cuts after her car was sandwiched between a truck and a tree, which had been blown across the road in Tuakau.
The tornado-struck couple at Clarks Beach, about 60km southwest of Auckland, were hit by some of the worst winds of yesterday's storm, as gusts of between 130km/h and 140km/h demolished their home but left nearby houses almost unaffected.
The head analyst at WeatherWatch.co.nz, Philip Duncan, said these circumstances indicated the presence of a tornado. The winds tended to start off at just 30 to 40km/h, but could pick up to around 130 to 140km/h in an instant.
"It would most likely be a small tornado at the lower end of the scale, not like the big ones you might see in America or on TV, but it is still a swirling vortex of cloud that picks stuff up," said Duncan.
"It would feel like a really big squall sweeping through."
Duncan said he also had eyewitness reports of a funnel tornado in Morrinsville around 2am yesterday.
The weekend's storm, estimated to be the size of Australia, had calmed down in some areas of the country yesterday, but gale force winds are still expected to whip through Wellington, Taranaki and Auckland.
In the Hauraki Gulf, the Coast Guard was kept busy as a number of yachts in the Shorthanded Sailing Association race broke their masts in strong winds.
In Tuakau, Natasha Stopforth, 17, was taken to hospital with neck injuries and cuts after the car she was travelling in smashed into a felled tree on Friday night.
A truck crashed into the back of the car, further ramming it into the fallen tree. The accident left both occupants of the car with injuries, but the truck driver disappeared from the accident scene.
"The driver of the truck came out and asked if they were okay, then did a runner," said Stopforth's cousin, Haley Brock. "He had to do a complete U-turn on the road, as the tree covered the entire road."
To the west where the storm hit first and hardest, two Raglan surf lifesavers had to be rescued by colleagues at Manu Bay, after they decided to train in dangerous 6m swells yesterday afternoon. The men fell from their inflatable boat and became caught in a rip before they were pulled to safety.
Raglan Surf Life Saving Club president Anne Snowden said they did not organise training in such bad weather and both men had been spoken to about their decision. "It could have ended up a lot worse," she said.
Auckland writer Nicky Pellegrino was on board a flight from Blenheim to Wellington on Friday when the plane was hit by lightning and forced to turn around.
"Lightning hit the plane and it dipped and rolled and knocked some of the instruments out temporarily," said Pellegrino.
"There was really bad turbulence ... they said they would have to abort the landing and fly back to Wellington."
Electricity company Powerco says the wind picked up trampolines and blew them into lines.
Back on the ground, two cars collided head-on in stormy conditions south of Masterton, causing one to spin and hit a third vehicle. One person was taken to hospital with serious back injuries.
Southland endured 20cm of snow and icy surfaces, which caused a number of cars to slide off roads in Invercargill. Heavy snow collapsed the roof of the New World supermarket and Stadium Southland.
Several houses in the Rangitikei town of Marton were threatened by flooding and fallen trees, and severe flooding closed State Highway 1 nearby.
On guard
Frontline cops took on guard duties on Friday night, spending six hours watching over a power line.
Two officers kept an eye on the line, on Birdwood Rd in Ranui, making sure no one was electrocuted.
A spokeswoman for Vector, the power company, said her records did not show the lines had posed a threat for that length of time.
