City sleeps through worst of weather

LUCKY Wellington escaped the worst of the wild weather yesterday, while many parts of the South Island were smashed by extreme gales.

While the wind did pick up in the capital, most people would have slept through the gusts, which reached up to 98kmh in Kelburn between 1am and 2am yesterday, MetService meteorologist Claire Flynn said.

On Sunday and yesterday morning, wild winds wreaked havoc across the South Island, downing electricity lines and fanning dozens of fires.

Hundreds of homes in the South Island were left without power. PowerNet chief executive Jason Franklin said the damage caused to the network was the worst that Southland and Otago had seen in 20 years.

Winds in Canterbury yesterday morning reached 70kmh in Lyttelton and 130kmh at Le Bons Bay on Banks Peninsula.

A tree at the old Gore hospital blew down across the street on Sunday night, taking out a boat and a truck, and a runaway water tank was captured on camera hurtling down the highway near Darfield, Canterbury.

More than 330 emergency calls were made to the Fire Service in the South Island over the 24 hours to 6am yesterday.

However, the gale-force winds that caused havoc in the south on Sunday calmed yesterday morning.

Flynn said the wild weather on Sunday was very unusual. ‘‘Sunday night was definitely a very significant event . . . it was certainly very, very windy down south. Our strongest gusts were at midday – 196kmh – so that’s very extreme, you don’t see those very often at all.’’

In Southland and Dunedin, the weather went from sunny to hailing in a matter of minutes. ‘‘It dropped about 10 degrees Celsius in a very short time, it was four seasons in one day, I guess.’’

Invercargill also saw unusually strong gusts of winds in the central city, reaching 70 knots – hurricane strength on the Beaufort Wind Scale.

Planes were grounded overnight on Sunday, with the wind too strong to even unload luggage from the planes that landed.

Thankfully, the worst was over for the region, according to MetService. It had a wind watch in place for Southland, Otago and Canterbury overnight but expected winds to ease today.

‘‘It’s looking like this week should be seeing a fair bit of sunshine for most of the country.’’