NIWA meteorologist Chris Brandolino joined Breakfast this morning to explain Cyclone Gabrielle's track and how it will affect Aotearoa.
Brandolino said Cyclone Gabrielle has largely "behaved as expected" and the path is now "pretty much locked in".
As the cyclone's centre moves closer to Great Barrier Island tonight, "it'll actually get stronger", he said.
"Low pressure... it's like a hole in the atmosphere, and Mother Nature wants to fill that hole with air.
"The deeper the hole, the more ferocious that wind will move."
And that wind "will really do a good job" tearing up structures in affected areas, Brandolino added.
"The analogy I like to use is, if you're doing your gardening and you do some weeding when the ground is wet, those weeds come up quite easily. Well, imagine those weeds being telephone poles, or powerlines, or trees," he said.
"The winds go really strong late today and tonight, and then continue for much of tomorrow and tomorrow evening.
"Eventually those winds relax on Wednesday."
But the wind is just one element, Brandolino stressed, with Auckland set to get double its usual February rainfall in 24 hours.
And if it doesn't feel bad yet this morning, "that's going to change", he added: "Today, things go downhill.
"For the Coromandel, Auckland, Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, [it's] kind of a crescendo, things build gradually.
"As it gets towards dinner time... things probably go downhill quite rapidly."
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