A Monday morning storm surge caught many Aucklanders off guard, with floodwaters breaching roads, businesses and backyards.
NIWA says Auckland had its second wettest hour on record and there were more than 9000 lightning strikes across the top of the North Island this morning.
Forecaster Chris Brandolino said Auckland's Mangere gauge recorded 52 millimetres in one hour, between 9am and 10am.
For Mangere, that is the most rain in an hour since November 1965.
Fire and Emergency had about 300 flood-related callouts across the city.
Schools were closed and for some businesses it was not worth opening. Others were left to mop up the water in their shops.
The sudden downpour collapsed part of the roof at Countdown, Point Chevalier. No one was hurt, but the supermarket was closed and staff spent the rest of the day in a mammoth clean-up effort.
The bad weather was another hit for the city's shops, already battling from multiple lockdown and traffic light restrictions.
"The floors, everything's completely drenched. A lot of water had come down through the way, our gutter's obviously overflowed and just went down the side of the wall and came into our premises and it was kind of, yeah - really surprised," Point Chevalier Dental owner Suresh Patel said.
"I think our equipment's damaged too so we're gonna have to get technicians in. It's really gut wrenching to be honest, but I feel for the people that were in Brisbane and Sydney when we heard about their rain and compare this to the Ukraine war - this is minor."
'Our road's turned into a river'
Red Beach School principal Julie Hepburn said students were sent packing when they arrived as floodwaters encroached.
Staff were using brooms to push the water out, but it kept flooding, she said.
"You can see behind me here. The amazing staff have got behind the brooms and they're sweeping up and as we're sweeping more water keeps coming so it's not a five-minute fix," she said.
"It's quite threatening because of the electricity and low lying electrical gear etc, so we had to turn off a number of areas for power just to make sure we stayed safe."
Further south, in Ellerslie, locals told Checkpoint how they had to chase their rubbish bins which were floating down the road in what seemed like a river.
"My neighbour phoned me and said 'can you please come out, I've just seen your bin floating past my house'. So I went out there and we were actually running, running up and down the street collecting all the neighbours' bins because our road's turned into a river."
Meanwhile, the city's motorways were congested in some places, made worse in Waterview where police closed the main road as a car fire broke out at the local BP.
The storm left as quickly as it arrived, as the cost counting and clean up kicked in.
