MetService has issued another severe storm warning for the already sodden north of the country as crews work to clear up the mess left by the weekend's weather bomb.
The storm, approaching from the north Tasman Sea, is tipped to bring heavy rain and severe gales to most of the country from Tuesday.
MetService says it will affect many parts of the North Island already hit by the weekend's wild weather.
"A burst of heavy rain is expected in most areas in the north of the North Island," it says. "However, sustained heavy rain should affect Northland, the Coromandel Peninsula, western Bay of Plenty and Gisborne from Tuesday afternoon or evening and continue into Wednesday.
"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."
MetService says people should watch out for rapidly rising streams and rivers, and drivers should expect hazardous conditions.
Northland Regional Council says the ground in the region is already saturated, and river levels are still high. It says flooding is likely to be more extensive, and more intense, than at the weekend, causing more slips and road closures.
The council says the storm is also expected to stay around longer than the weekend event, which was over in a day.
Website hits
The weekend's severe storm resulted in almost twice the usual number of people logging on to MetService's website.
MetService chief information officer Russell Turner says the website usually logs between 400,000 and 500,000 a week, but had about 800,000 hits during the past week.
Mr Turner says the system struggled at times to cope with the volume and kept crashing. In the days leading up to the storm, most people spent about two minutes browsing on the website, but on Saturday that increased to four minutes.
Mr Turner says people can expect similar delays if they log on during the big storm expected to hit the country later this week.
Power back
At least 200 homes remain without power in the Auckland region on Monday evening as crews work to try to reconnect them before the second deep low hits.
Vector says crews will be working through the night to repair faults, but remaining customers may have to spend another night without power.
At least 1500 residents are without hot water on the North Shore and Waitakere.
Vector chief executive Simon Mackenzie says the extent of the damage to the hot water network means it may still be some days before facilities are fully restored.
However, Top Energy says only a handful of customers in the Far North region are still without power.
