It might pay to tie down your trampolines and keep a tight grip on your brollies with the MetService has issued a severe weather watch for the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel.

While a strong, unstable westerly flow covering the North Island should ease today, a cold front moving rapidly up the country is likely to bring further westerly gales to much of the North Island on Saturday.

Strong wind gusts brought down a 20-year-old Melia tree in Maungatapu this morning. Photos: Bruce Barnard

'This watch is for the possibility of severe westerly gales in exposed parts of all North Island areas from Manawatu northwards through to this afternoon Friday,” says the MetService.

'Also, the westerly gales are forecast to return to all North island areas from Auckland southwards for a time from Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning.”

This morning Port of Tauranga's crane five down on the Sulphur Point Wharf recorded a gust of 55 knots (101km/h) at 11am. The average wind speed at the time was 36 knots (66km/h).

At around the same time, wind gusts brought down a 20-year-old Melia tree on the corner of Maungatapu Road and Anchorage Grove.

Arbor Care co-owner and contract manager Grant Schuler says despite the medium sized Melia being stable and having a good root base, it was still no match for the 'horrendous winds” which swept through the area this morning.

'There were quite a few gusts that seem to have come through that area and did a bit of damage this morning,” he says.

'In the last couple of hours we've had about six callouts for trees being brought down by the winds, we've got a couple of crews on standby and patrolling around the normal hotspot areas, like the Tauranga Domain, just keeping an eye things and making sure everything's safe.”