KEY POINTS:
MetService has today issued another severe weather warning, with heavy rain and strong winds likely from tomorrow over many parts of the North Island affected by the weekend's bad weather.
Forecasters said a low is expected to deepen rapidly on Tuesday and batter the North Island on Tuesday and Wednesday.
It will then move southeast over New Zealand on Thursday and Friday.
Sustained heavy rain should affect Northland, the Coromandel Peninsula, western Bay of Plenty and Gisborne from Tuesday afternoon or evening and continue into Wednesday.
The MetService warnings said: "Gale force northeast winds are likely in exposed places but at this stage the winds are not expected to be as strong as during Saturday's events.
"However, trees and buildings badly affected during the weekends storms may experience further damage. People in these areas should watch out for rapidly rising streams and rivers and hazardous driving conditions and keep up to date with the latest warnings."
The third storm to hit in a week will not be as severe as Saturday's but will cover a larger area, the Radio Network's head weather analyst Philip Duncan said.
"Saturday's storm was relatively small in size but big in severity, this next storm won't be as intense but will cover a much bigger area, affecting most of New Zealand," he said.
mr Duncan said the areas to be affected would be Northland, Bay of Plenty, Auckland, Waikato, Taranaki, Manawatu, Nelson and West Coast while severe gales are likely in Manawatu, Wellington and Wairarapa.
Power was slowly being restored to thousands of homes today as the North Island recovers from the storm that in some areas was the worst in 30 years.
Firefighters in Te Aroha in the eastern Waikato believe the storm was worse than one in 1978 which destroyed the town's movie theatre.
Chief fire officer and service station owner Lindsay Spooner said Saturday's storm, which forced the residents of eight houses to evacuate their homes after roofs flew off, was "slightly more intensive" than in 1978.
MetService extreme weather forecaster Erick Brenstrum said it was a blessing that the storm was fast-moving "so that meant we didn't have a really long period of the heavy rain or the strong winds in any one spot".
He reported rain of up to 100mm in the 18 hours to midnight on Saturday at an Auckland Regional Council monitoring station at Makarau north of Kaukapakapa, and winds gusting to 165km/h down Northland's east coast to Auckland.
"We could see it was going to be pretty dramatic and some of the winds reported around the east coast bear out the fact it was a very dangerous storm and we've seen a lot of damage in different places."
Despite several deaths being attributed to the weather bomb, Mr Brenstrum believed considerably more people could have lost their lives had there not been such strong warnings.
"We certainly believe that reduced the loss of life or injuries - people by and large heeded the advice to get themselves out of the line of danger."
Mr Duncan believed the eastern Waikato was one of the worst hit districts, although Cape Reinga was hit by winds of 174km/h as late as 11pm on Saturday.
On Auckland's North Shore, residents faced another day without hot water yesterday. Vector spokesperson Philippa White said a number of pilot lines - which separately channel power to hot water - had been "extensively damaged" by the storm, and it could be a while before residents in the affected areas - including Narrowneck, Devonport to Hauraki Corner, and parts of Puhoi and Coatesville - could enjoy a hot shower.
"Our priority right now is to get power to the people who are without power at all for the last two days," she said, estimating that number on the North Shore to be about 1,000 homes last night.
"[After] we get those people back on the network, then we can work towards getting those without hot water sorted."
Around 400 of 40,000 homes on the Powerco network affected by the weekend storms would still be without power today, the company said last night.
The affected households were in Whitianga, Coromandel Town, Whangamata, Kerepehi, Waihi Beach, Tauranga, Manawatu and Taranaki. It was thought that about 7000 homes in the Far North, Northland and the Coromandel would still be without power today. Philippa White said last night there were 20 Vector customers in the Auckland area without power, and 800 in Rodney and Waitakere.
