Wairarapa survives 'weather bomb'

Wairarapa escaped the worst of Saturday's weather bomb but emergency services and council contractors were still kept busy.

Civil Defence controller Kevin Tunnell said the worst of the weather hit between 11am and 3pm, with council contractors clearing fallen trees off roads, particularly around Mauriceville and Tinui, and managing surface flooding from blocked drains.

The Waipoua river rose to a 10-year high of 3.1 metres, and there were some road closures including Paerau Rd in Masterton and in South Wairarapa at the Waihenga bridge and Jenkins Dip floodway.

According to MetService, 81mm of rain fell on Saturday with south-east winds up to 83km/h.

"The bottom line is that we were lucky the Ruahines and Tararuas separated us from the main effects of the weather bomb," said Mr Tunnell.

Martinborough fire brigade's deputy chief John Hunter said they had "a little bit of a run" due to weather on Saturday.

They had several call-outs for fallen trees, including a branch which had fallen on a parked Tranzit bus on Cologne St.

Tranzit manager Les Cockeram said the bus was able to be driven out from underneath the branch, and was undamaged.

He said there was some disruption to bus services, primarily due to the closure of the Waihenga bridge.

About 30,000 residents across the North Island were left without power, although all but 5500 had service restored by Sunday.

Around 60 Wairarapa residents were still without power yesterday, though Powerco could not confirm in which area or when they would have power restored.

Most outages in the area were due to trees falling on power lines, said Powerco's general manager for electricity Andrew McLeod.

South Taranaki and Wanganui were worst hit by the weather bomb with around 600 overhead lines brought down.