Parts of Northland are cleaning up after the soggy weekend and last week's huge rainstorm.
Flooding near Kaeo on Friday. Photo: Supplied / Stacey Davidson
A number of homes were flooded, and rivers burst their banks - but unusually for the north - the water went almost as rapidly as it came.
The tiny Maori community of Matangirau always cops it when the heavens open - as they did at the weekend.
The Te Touwai River rises up, and roars through the valley, smashing windows and ranchsliders and surging through the houses.
Robert Rush and his family were moving into their mother's old house when the first rain bomb hit on Friday.
"Lunchtime until about three o'clock, it came up really quickly.
"One minute there was showers and then next minute it just come down.
Within half an hour or an hour, everything was under water. Luckily the children were at school and so they were safe."
And luckily - or unluckily - Matangirau people know what to do when the river turns feral. They move everything they can upstairs, if they've got an upstairs, then open all the doors and windows.
Robert Rush said there was less damage that way. "It's happened about a dozen times now over the years. I feel sorry for the first timers on the news over the last few days, but we're sort of used to it."
Several families had to evacuate their homes on Friday night in the Kerikeri area and in one case, Raumanga Heights in Whangarei.
And large tracts of farmland across the region were underwater on Saturday.
But by Sunday most of the water had gone.
In Kaeo - where floods devastated the town repeatedly a decade ago - the river briefly flooded State Highway 10, made off with the Fire Brigade's picnic table and threatened to flood the station. But then it retreated.
Kaeo garage owner John Owens said the north had a lucky escape this time because of the extreme variations in the rainfall from one small locality to the next.
He said there had been 14mm of rain at Whangaroa. "Up in Matauri I know one of the farmers there, he's recorded 225mm for the two days, so yes it's been very patchy."
In Kaitaia, the big downpour came in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Ann Walker said her family farm was underwater for about eight hours and the river had made a mess of the fences and pasture.
But there was an upside for the farmers.
"It's still really warm so the grass is still growing really fast which is a big difference from two weeks ago, when we were really in a drought and we didn't really have very much grass.
"Talk about lurching from one extreme to another."
That mix of sunshine and showers is predicted for the next few days.
