Trees down as ex-Tropical Cyclone Lola moves down east coast

There's expected to be a sting in the tail of ex-Tropical Cyclone Lola, with high seas, strong winds and heavy rain forecast for the East Coast. 

The wild weather is moving south but it's still having an impact with trees down and dozens of people still without power throughout the North Island.  

Weather warnings remain in place for the Coromandel Peninsula, Bay of Plenty and Gisborne, with another 100mm of rain expected to fall by Tuesday evening.    

Monday's wild weather served up damage across the island, with boats washing ashore and roads completely flooded in some areas.   

It comes as dozens of households in the upper North Island are waking to a third day of no power. 

In the Far North, 69 households are still without power, according to local power provider Top Energy. 

In the Auckland region, Vector is reporting large parts of Waiheke Island are still without power. While the website doesn't give a specific number of people affected, it does say most have been without power since Sunday. 

Powerco said 161 properties are without power on the east coast of the North Island near Tauranga and also near New Plymouth, Mangaweka, Pongaroa and Wellington.

Gisborne Civil Defence and Emergency Group Manager Ben Green told AM on Tuesday morning the only issues overnight were a couple of trees down on the road.   

Green said the tree was down between Te Puia Springs and Ruatoria.   

"The only problems or issues last night, just a couple of trees down on the roads, just impeded an ambulance patient. They managed to find a bypass for that," he said.  

"Quite a large tree down there and from talking to Waka Kotahi. The removal of that should be underway today. The bypass is via Waipiro Bay, so they managed to restore a workaround route there, which is a good thing."  

He told AM co-host Ryan Bridge the river catchments, which were their biggest concerns, held up well overnight.   

"The river catchments, which are always our primary concern, particularly with the amount of water that goes into them, the levels were pretty much well within now severe monitoring parameters, so nothing of any significant concern there," he said.   

"I think daylight, particularly as we have seen in our last rain event, it's the land that probably tends to be where the surprises come from. Things are so fragile out there and I think that's what we'll see coming through from our last eight hours. We'd expect to see perhaps news coming through on it."  

Green told AM he wasn't aware of any evacuations.   

"The weather for the most part, or certainly where we started yesterday, is probably welcome for those. Believe it or not, tap water has been a concern heading into this weather, which is complete irony with the amount of water we've had," he said.   

"With the orange rain warning, that's not taken lightly by our communities and everyone's got a bit of heightened sensitivity around these events when they come in." 

Gisborne Mayor Rehette Stoltz told Newshub on Monday afternoon her community has hardly recovered from Cyclone Gabrielle and now has this to add to it.  

"It's like a stop-start, one step forward one step back so yes, we will probably be seeing more slips or unstable areas or flooded roads or bridges but we will deal with it as it comes our way," Stoltz said

Watch the full interview with Ben Green in the video above.