Firefighters are battling flooding in Matamata as heavy rain causes water levels to rise.

A tweet on the NZ Fire Service Twitter feed says two houses on Ashworth Pl, Matamata, are being threatened by large lake forming at back of properties. 'Urgent need for sand bagging”.

Overnight, firefighters dealt with 40 weather related incidents across NZ. About 192 firefighters were deployed to these incidents.

Cyclone Cook

The latest analysis of position of Cyclone Cook puts it around 300km northeast of Cape Reinga at 6am this morning.

MetService forecasters have now issued an updated forecast track for Cyclone Cook.

It looks likely that it will continue moving southwards today over the central North Island, with its centre lying close to Cape Palliser in the early hours of Friday morning, and be located to the east of Kaikoura around 6am Friday, before continuing southwest and offshore the South Island later on Friday.