Fire and Emergency New Zealand has received 277 weather-related calls for help in the last seven hours from 8am - 3pm.

More than half of these calls came through between the hours of 12pm and 1pm. While 19 of these calls were from Northland, 258 calls were from Auckland.

About 100 of these were classed as urgent and the rest were classed as non-urgent.

Brad Mosby, on-call Commander for Tāmaki Makaurau, is urging people to be cautious and prepared.

"Please avoid unnecessary travel and don’t travel through floodwater. It’s difficult to judge the depth and currents during the daytime and impossible at night," he says.

Fire and Emergency is asking people to remember to call 111 when life and safety are at risk, so the people who urgently need help can get through to our communications centre.

"Calls to flooded basements, for example, are not urgent. Please delay reporting those kinds of incidents until the current rainstorm has passed," Brad Mosby says.

You can find more information on how to prepare for severe weather here: Extreme weather events: safety tips and support | Fire and Emergency New Zealand

For the latest weather warnings follow MetService, and follow NZ Civil Defence and your local Civil Defence page for emergency warnings and advice.

The next update will be at 5pm.

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