my thinking is this:
it was small and compact and spinning like a top..lots of angular momentum etc
as it approached from the north, encountering the coromandel peninsular, that was like a barrier
its not going to want to straddle that (surface pressures and winds..upper level rain bands did)
and so instead it slipped to the east of that land mass
then the same thing happened..it was not wanting to interact with the land mass of the bay of plenty easily...that friction was like making it bounce around a bit..like a spinning top hitting the side of a container
hence why the pressure and wind really built up in the white island area..untill it suddenly the pressure was enough for that wind system to move inland..you could see that on the rain radar..suddenly a narrow curved rain band feature showed up right on the whakatane coast line...right when the wind really suddenly peaked up there..it was like a pressure bow echo
once it broke through moving onto the land, that is when Tauranga got the strongest winds too (offshore there, onshore in whakatane)
land friction slowed the winds and made them spread out more, into hawkes bay and
Hawkes bay had the wind coming in straight off the ocean, so very exposed (and the wind pressure was strongest up against the high to the east too)
anyway, would be a great mesoscale study could be done on the hours before landfall
also It could very well be that for the eastern BOP, it was the worst storm since the Wahine storm, hearing reports of widespread trees blown over, etc
