Today’s violent storm that brought chaos to Wellington and injured a man in Auckland is now starting to ease.  As of 7pm no weather observations had recorded a gust over 100km/h with the strong winds now mostly confined to the North Island’s north eastern corner.

Winds hovering near gale force were blasting through Whakatane tonight with gusts to 93km/h and 70km/h gusts from about Wairoa northwards along the east coast.

In Auckland winds gusting around 150km/h blasted the Manukau Heads with One News reporting a man had been injured when a small shed crashed on to him.

Winds hovered around gale force from late this afternoon across Auckland but gusts failed to reach over 90km/h for most suburbs, with only estimates that winds of 120km/h affected the Harbour Bridge and central city amongst the high rises.

A relatively gentle northerly is blowing through Wellington tonight averaging around 20km/h and gusting to 60km/h.

Meanwhile a southerly across the lower half of the South Island has already dropped temperatures to single digits this evening.

The Weather Watch Centre expects conditions to remain windy tonight with sou’westers picking up over the South Island too.

West or South West winds should remain across the country Wednesday with another 2 or 3 more fronts expected before the end of the week – meaning a showery, windy and cold week for western areas, and a dry, windy and mild week for those in the east.

MetService has tonight lifted a number of warnings.  All active warnings can be found here.