{"id":207343,"date":"2025-12-29T21:55:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/207343\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T21:55:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:55:15","slug":"live-weather-updates-power-outages-heavy-rain-and-strong-gales-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/207343\/","title":{"rendered":"Live weather updates: Power outages, heavy rain and strong gales"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4JVMQQ1_Image_1_jfif.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"591\" alt=\"The roof of an unoccupied home in the Auckland suburb of Hillsborough came off in high winds and scattered debris down the road.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nThe roof of an unoccupied home in the Auckland suburb of Hillsborough came off in high winds and scattered debris down the road.<br \/>\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Kim Baker Wilson\n<\/p>\n<p>Wild weather is continuing to batter much of the country today, with multiple warnings and watches.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are still expecting quite a windy day and with that we still have several watches and warnings in place, both for strong winds as well as heavy rain,&#8221; MetService Meteorologist Mmathapelo Makgabutlane said.<\/p>\n<p>Follow the latest updates here:<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s today&#8217;s forecast?<\/p>\n<p>Strong wind warnings for the northern and central parts of the North Island have expired but several regions remain in the firing line.<\/p>\n<p>Electra was reporting power cuts on the Kapiti Coast affecting Paekakariki, Foxton and Shannon on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>On the West Coast, Buller Electricity Ltd said the power was off to Karamea, Little Wanganui and Karamea Bluff.<\/p>\n<p>Metservice said another day of heavy rain and strong south-east gales was in store for central New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p>A strong wind warning was in place for Marlborough Sounds, Nelson and the West Coast north of Fox Glacier until 2pm, with Wellington under a wind watch until 9pm.<\/p>\n<p>Heavy rain watches are in force for the Tararua District and Wairarapa until 4pm, and the Kaikoura Coast until 9pm.<\/p>\n<p>Tauranga City Council has cancelled all five of its community New Year&#8217;s Eve events because of the bad weather forecast.<\/p>\n<p>The council said weather reports indicated heavy rain and strong winds during event set-up, with conditions highly likely to continue into Wednesday. It said fireworks displays would hopefully still take place from various locations around the city on New Year&#8217;s Eve.<\/p>\n<p>Cleanup continues<\/p>\n<p>In the parts of the South Island, strong winds brought down trees overnight.<\/p>\n<p>Has your holiday been disrupted by the weather? Email iwitness@rnz.co.nz with your photos or information.<\/p>\n<p>Fire and Emergency said State Highway 7 over the Rahu Saddle, between Reefton and Springs Junction, was affected.<\/p>\n<p>State Highway 6 also had trees coming down, particularly through the Whangamoa Hills between Nelson and Blenheim.<\/p>\n<p>Firefighters were still being called out into the evening across the North Island, taking the total number of weather-related jobs to about 140 in Auckland, Northland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty.<\/p>\n<p>PowerCo said hundreds of properties remain without power north of Whanganui, and around Palmerston North and Feilding.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4JVMQQ1_Image_jfif.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"591\" alt=\"The roof of an unoccupied home in the Auckland suburb of Hillsborough came off in high winds and scattered debris down the road.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nThe roof of an unoccupied home in the Auckland suburb of Hillsborough came off in high winds and scattered debris down the road.<br \/>\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Kim Baker Wilson\n<\/p>\n<p>Campground holidays disrupted<\/p>\n<p>Campground managers in the North Island are hoping for sunnier weather <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/582800\/weather-set-to-worsen-ahead-of-new-year-s-eve\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">leading up to New Year&#8217;s<\/a> after a lashing of wind and rain.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/582830\/weather-heavy-rain-strong-winds-for-much-of-country\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Wild weather battered much of the North Island<\/a> on Monday, disrupting campers, causing power outages and downing trees.<\/p>\n<p>In Auckland a roof was torn off an unoccupied home in Hillsborough, as fire crews responded to more than 100 weather-related callouts.<\/p>\n<p>The manager of K\u016baotunu Campground on the Coromandel Peninsula, Yvette Davey, said the weather had caused a bit of disruption on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have had a couple of campers that their tents were destroyed so they had to go home, other than that people are hunkering down, it&#8217;s settled down here,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Leanne Mills, the owner of Long Bay Motor Camp in Coromandel said campers were not too put off by the wet weather.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4KVBTDU_IMG_7991_jpg.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"616\" alt=\"A camping tent.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nCampground managers in the North Island are hoping for sunnier weather leading up to New Year&#8217;s.<br \/>\nPhoto: Ruth Kuo\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve had a bit of rain [on Monday] but we&#8217;ve been lucky campers have just used it as a crash day, just chill out, read a book, sleep,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve just got continued support from our regulars, mostly 90 percent Kiwis, so they&#8217;ll come and just meet up every year with the same people year after year and they don&#8217;t really care if it rains.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Festivalgoers for New Year&#8217;s events such as Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/582805\/rhythm-and-vines-partiers-urged-to-stay-careful-on-wet-busy-roads\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">warned to watch out for wild weather<\/a> on the roads.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/radionz.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=211a938dcf3e634ba2427dde9&amp;id=b3d362e693\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The roof of an unoccupied home in the Auckland suburb of Hillsborough came off in high winds and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-207343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}