A once dry paddock, is now a torrent of water. Photo / Sarah Ivey
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Another fast moving front is expected to bring squally weather to a battered North Island overnight while more heavy snow is forecast for parts of Southland already battling the heaviest snowfall in years.
Severe westerly gales, powerful enough to uproot trees, are expected in the Coromandel, according to WeatherWatch.
Auckland
has seen a morning of heavy showers, hail and isolated thunderstorms and the conditions are forecast to continue.
There is a windchill of around 6degC in the southwesterly gusts.
Some of the strongest winds this week have caused about 50 callouts to the Fire Service in Auckland, said Scott Osmond, from its northern communications centre.
One piece of roof came off the former Lion Breweries building in Newmarket, close to the city centre, and landed on the nearby rail track.
A spokeswoman for Veolia Transport said the piece of roof was cleared relatively quickly and trains were running as planned, though a 40km/h speed limit was set due to the high winds.
Mr Osmond said scaffolding had fallen and caused serious damage to a three-storey house under construction in suburban Hillsborough.
Other than those, Mr Osmond said most of the callouts were about trees and power lines down.
The weather had closed a number of roads in Auckland including the southbound Grafton Road onramp, the westbound Wellesley Street onramp, both south and northbound Dominion road offramps to Mount Roskill and the southbound Ellerslie onramp.
Around 900 households were still without power across the North Island after six days of severe weather cut power to more than 79,000 customers, Powerco network operations manager Phil Marsh said.
High winds overnight caused more damage to the network and most people currently without power are in the Wairarapa and Taranaki regions, he said.
There are also isolated customers affected across the North Island in ones and twos because of minor faults and blown fuses.
Power should be restored today unless there was further weather related damage.
In Wanganui, a wave warning has been issued by MetService which has forecast waves of up to four metres, on the west coast of the North Island from Waitotara to Otaki overnight and on Friday.
The cold snap in Southland which is plaguing farmers in peak lambing season looks unlikely to let up as MetService issues a heavy snow warning for inland Southland and Clutha.
Significant snow is likely down to 100 metres overnight with another 10 to 15cm of snow possible over 200 metres.
State Highway 94 between Te Anau and Milford Sound has been closed because of the snow until further notice.
South Island farmers say that as many of a million lambs forecast to be born in Otago and Southland could die because of bitterly cold conditions.
- NZPA
