Get home before the worst of the weather hits, officials are telling drivers today.
Cyclone Cook is bearing down on New Zealand, bringing torrential rain and gusts of up to 150km/h in some regions.
Nearly 140 schools and 135 early learning centres closed across the North Island and Thames, Coromandel and Bay of Plenty are under states of emergency.
Four people died on New Zealand roads last Easter and in light of Cyclone Cook, associate Transport Minister David Bennett is urging people to seriously reconsider their Easter travel plans and only travel if absolutely necessary.
"Four people lost their lives on our roads over Easter last year, and their families are facing another holiday without their loved ones.
"The number of crashes on our roads is much too high, and the deaths are often avoidable."
Simple things such as sticking to the speed limit, driving to the conditions and wearing your seatbelt would all help avoid fatal crashes, he said.
Automobile Association boss Mike Noon said one of the biggest concerns the AA had was the number of people not wearing seatbelts dying in crashes.
"Twenty-two of the people who died in the first three months of this year were not buckled up," Noon said.
"In just two seconds we could dramatically improve our road toll if every single driver and passenger wore their seatbelt every time they got into a vehicle."
Planes are delayed, roads are closed and people are being told to evacuate some areas as Cyclone Cook's fury is unleashed across the country.
Conditions are expected to be so hazardous in someplaces that MetService is advising people to consider altering Easter travel plans, and it says "don't take any chances".
Queues of commuters are already taking to Auckland's streets as people try to leave work early to beat the storm and a possible Harbour Bridge closure.
Buses are at capacity, scores of people are lining up at bus stops, and motorways are clogging.
The NZ Transport Agency's Auckland highway manager said closing the Harbour bridge would be unprecedented but if predicted winds of between 130-160km/h eventuated, travel would be dangerous.
''If the bridge is closed to traffic this will have a flow-on effect across the rest of the motorway and local road network, so motorists should expect long delays, and avoid travelling if they don't need to."
On the Coromandel Peninsula's east coast, residents living on low-lying areas are being told to get out immediately.
The Thames Coromandel District Council said were being affected by king tide flooding and people needed to get out while they can.
Fire crews were going door-to-door in the holiday hotspots of Whitianga, Whangamata, Tairua and Pauanui helping evacuate residents to welfare centres as the situation becomes urgent.
Civil Defence welfare centres have been set up across the peninsula.
This morning the cyclone was sitting 180 nautical miles northeast of the country and expected to make landfall about 6pm.
Yesterday's lashing of rain which flooded houses and caused landslips was just the beginning, with many places expected to see a month's worth of rain fall in the space of a day.
As well as rainfall and hurricane-force winds expecting to cause damage to homes and land, there are concerns of erosion, power outages, roofs and trees lifting, 5m swells and rising rivers.
The weather is starting to disrupt flights at Wellington Airport. A number of flights have been cancelled or delayed indefinitely.
Air New Zealand earlier warned that weather was expected to cause significant disruption to flights across the country today.
The most severe weather was expect to extend from the centre by about 100 to 150km, forecaster Philip Duncan said.
"The centre is where the biggest storm surge is. The centre of the spinning low is so powerful it sort of sucks up the sea height underneath it, creating a tide that can be half a metre to a metre above normal, adding to coastal flooding concerns."
Rain was expected to be especially heavy in the Western Bay of Plenty and the Coromandel Peninsula, with up to 250mm expected to fall over two days and gusts of 150kmh or higher.
A state of emergency was yesterday declared by the Thames-Coromandel mayor. One is already in place for the Bay of Plenty.
"Damaging winds, possibly hurricane force for a time, may impact some areas around the centre of this low," Duncan said.
The storm is unwelcome news for many Edgecumbe residents who remain unable to return to their homes swamped in last week's floods during Cyclone Debbie. Others living in rural areas are still cut off.
People in Thames needed to heed the warnings and make sure trampolines were tied down, they had enough food, torches and batteries available, said MetService meteorologist Lisa Murray.
"They're going to be right in the path of Cyclone Cook.
"This is such a widespread event. People just need to hunker down.
"We're expecting downpours of 50mm in an hour, which is phenomenal - for instance, with Cyclone Debbie we were saying it was phenomenal with 40mm per hour of rain. But this one will have a lot of wind associated, which is not the case with Debbie."
"We are being vigilant with this system, because it may be not prolonged but it will have a massive impact. We are expecting to see damage."
She said she had "grave concerns" about the erosion potential.
Auckland, Northland, the Far North, the wider Bay of Plenty, Waikato, Gisborne and the Hawkes Bay are also all expected to feel the impact today.
Gusts of up to 140km/h or more could hit this afternoon, with 150-300mm of rain expected through to this evening.
Great Barrier Island, northeast of Auckland, could be hit with even higher gusts of up to 165-plus km/h. The island's 1000 residents are being warned to brace for extreme impact.
In Auckland, the Bay of Plenty and the Coromandel, 94 schools and 129 early childhood centres had been advised to close today.
Winds were expected pick up in the Wairarapa and Wellington overnight, and possibly in eastern Manawatu, Horowhenua and Kapiti.
Cyclone Cook will be fast moving and by midnight to dawn tomorrow, it may already be at Cook Strait.
It will be the first time in history a storm named Cook not only hit Cook Strait but crossed directly over it, WeatherWatch say.
By tomorrow morning, the storm will be centred near Christchurch if current modelling is correct.
Downpours may be intense in South Canterbury and coastal Otago for a time tomorrow with concern of flooding.
Murray said Cyclone Cook had changed from a tropical cyclone to a "mid-latitude low" - a "very different beast" from Cyclone Debbie.
Debbie was spread out, with noticeable bands of rain hitting the country interspersed with periods of calm. Cook, by contrast, will be short and sharp, but bring a "phenomenal" amount of rain, Murray said.
"It is a really tightly packed cyclone - the isobars are very tight - which means strong winds, heavy rain and storm surges."
Meteorologist Andy Best said he'd been working as a forecaster at MetService for about 20 years, and had never seen an event like this one.
He said the last weather event to have similar conditions was Cyclone Giselle, which hit New Zealand in 1968 and contributed to the Wahine disaster.
The sinking of the Lyttelton-Wellington ferry Wahine on 10 April 1968 was New Zealand's worst modern maritime disaster, claiming more than 52 lives.
Air New Zealand has also sent out an advisory to passengers to keep updated via its website about any flights that may be affected by the cyclone.
