Readers are reporting several flooded roads this morning in the Eastern Bay of Plenty on the Whakatane News Facebook page.
One driver had a lucky escape in the Eastern Bay of Plenty on Thursday.
The man was driving along State Highway 2 between Awakeri Rd and Western Drain Rd when he saw limbs start to come down from roadside trees. He stopped his car and got out in the nick of time - just before a large tree crashed down on to his car.
Busy night for Eastern Bay emergency crews
Meanwhile, Hamurana resident Angus France had to jump into Lake Rotorua to rescue one of his sheep which had been washed away down a stream and swept into the lake.
Mr France said the sheep had tried to cross a stream on their property which was normally ankle deep but had become about 1.2m deep with the heavy rain.
Video filmed in the central North Island and uploaded to YouTube by GlobalLeaks
He said the un-named sheep was "quite a few metres" offshore when he went out to rescue it, along with friend Jonny Barrow who had been out kayaking.
"The river had really come up quite quickly."
High winds and heavy rain played havoc with the electricity network around Rotorua - especially in rural areas.
Unison customer relations manager Danny Gough said pockets of outages were experienced across the network, mainly due to trees and debris damaging lines.
Mr Gough said about 1500 customers were still without power yesterday morning but power had been restored to all but "a pocket" by the afternoon.
Metservice forecaster Richard Finnie said there would still be showers, possibly heavy and thundery, today and tomorrow with Monday looking like the pick of the weekend for getting outdoors.
Mr Finnie said Rotorua, halfway through April, had received more than its monthly average so far for the month.
"That's a lot of rainfall [in this storm system]. It was almost the whole month's worth."
Tuesday and Wednesday were looking fine, with showers expected from Thursday.
