Wild weather to get worse before it gets better - meteorologist

Orange weather warnings have been issued further south as heavy rain batters parts of the North Island today, with wild weather forecasted to continue across parts of the country this week.

MetService has issued weather warnings and watches across the North and South Island in the past 24 hours.

In Northland, an orange heavy rain warning was issued between 8pm Sunday and 2am today. Overnight over 1000 households were without power with outages reported.

Meanwhile, two MetService alerts apply to Coromandel. A 21-hour orange heavy rain warning will last until 5pm today. A strong wind watch was also in place overnight.

In Auckland, a heavy rain watch applied until 6am this morning. Waka Kotahi warned yesterday that the city's Harbour Bridge could close if wind speeds were high.

State Highway 1 connecting Warkworth to Wellsford in Auckland's north remains closed to southbound traffic due to a landslip yesterday.

In Western Bay of Plenty, an orange heavy rain warning is in place. It applies west of Kawerau, including Rotorua, between 8pm Sunday and 2am tomorrow.

From Kawerau to Te Kaha in the Bay of Plenty, a heavy rain watch applies between 1pm today and 9am Wednesday.

A 34-hour heavy rain watch also applies for Gisborne, north of Tokomaru Bay, between 1pm today and 11pm tomorrow.

NIWA meteorologist Chris Brandolino told Breakfast that there was still uncertainty about where the "atmospheric river" would impact in the next two to three days.

"Just a small shift in that will really determine where the heaviest rain goes," he said.

"The big question is, does that zone travel off-shore? Maybe sparing the western parts of the North Island? Or does it stay on shore and really impact in places like Northland, Bay of Plenty, Coromandel, and especially parts of the South Island."

In the South Island, Brandolino said he was looking at the area from Westland, "over towards the Tasman area, perhaps even the Westport area."

In Tasman northwest of Motueka, an orange heavy rain warning has been issued from 3pm today to 3pm tomorrow. Further south, an orange heavy rain warning has been issued for Westland south of Otira between 8am Tuesday and 9pm Wednesday.