Victims have likened tornadoes in Auckland and Taranaki to freight trains running straight through their homes and leaving just as quickly.
In mere seconds of chaos, roofs were ripped off and one woman thrown against a wall suffered a broken collar bone.
Dave Harris and his family are all about an open-door policy, but last night's tornado in Auckland has taken that to a whole new level.
The double carport roof and lounge ceiling at their St Heliers home are gone, and the chimney is snapped following a thunderstorm that was felt right across the city.
"It was like snow against the windows and then bang, it was like an explosion," said his partner Sheridan.
The chaos lasted just 10 seconds, but in that time, the neighbour's red roof swirled over the fence and landed in the Gaul-Harris' back yard.
Their own carport flew 30 metres over their roof and jammed against it.
The rest of the roof had a mind of its own catapulting into Craig Hawkins place.
He and his family ducked for cover inside as it tore off the corner of their lounge with a terrifying rumble.
"There you go smashed the trampoline, ruined the clothesline, there's some pretty big pieces of wood in there that was what was flying around in the air," said Hawkins.
Across town Auckland's waterfront venue, the Cloud lost part of its roof.
And the destruction continued in New Plymouth. By late morning, the squally thundery weather had whipped up another tornado.
John Bamford's wife Maxine broke her collarbone when the force of it smashed her against a wall.
"I was having breakfast saw it come straight through the windows, it annihilated all the lounge, took all the windows out, took tables threw them up in the air annihilated trees that are 40 odd years old," he told Newshub.
And while many are now in clean-up mode, Metservice says we should brace for more bad weather and power outages across much of the North Island tonight.
Newshub.
