Roads are closing, flights are cancelled and lakes are approaching flood warning levels as the wild weather hits parts of the South.<\/p>\n
Rain has been falling heavily in Queenstown and W\u0101naka this morning, with thunder and lightning reported in Queenstown.<\/p>\n
The Queenstown Lakes District Council says its emergency operations centre is tracking rain, river and lake levels across the district.<\/p>\n
Several roads have already closed due to flooding or slips and the council says more closures are likely.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Current closures:<\/p>\n
Rees Valley Road, Glenorchy (flooding)Mount Aspiring Road, W\u0101naka (flooding)SH6 Makarora – Haast (slip)<\/p>\n
Lake Wakatipu is at its first flood warning level at Queenstown and approaching it at Glenorchy.<\/p>\n
Lake\u00a0 W\u0101naka has almost reached its first flood warning level.<\/p>\n
Some 88mm of rain fell north of Glenorchy overnight, and 25mm at\u00a0 W\u0101naka.<\/p>\n
The Otago Regional Council earlier said extensive flooding was likely in Glenorchy today.<\/p>\n
It was also expecting flooding in low-lying Queenstown streets near Lake Wakatipu and on the foreshore of Lake W\u0101naka.<\/p>\n
An orange heavy rain warning is in place for the headwaters of the Otago and Canterbury lakes and rivers, and the Westland ranges.<\/p>\n
NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi advised about 9.30am that Haast Pass (State Highway 6) was closed owing to a slip, while the Milford Road (SH94) is closed\u00a0from Cascade Creek due to landslides and fallen trees covering the road.<\/p>\n
The Central Otago District Council says there are “a number of areas” across the region with surface flooding, and heavy rain is continuing to fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The council said Clyde, Alexandra, Lowburn and Pisa Moorings were the worst-affected areas.<\/p>\n
It advised motorists to travel only if it was essential, and to “please stay off roads if you do not need to be out there”.<\/p>\n
The whole of the South Island is being lashed by the wild weather, which has cut power to tens of thousands of people and caused scores of flight cancellations<\/a>.<\/p>\n A slew of flights at both Dunedin<\/a> and Queenstown<\/a> airports have been affected.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0– Allied Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roads are closing, flights are cancelled and lakes are approaching flood warning levels as the wild weather hits…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-95133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95133","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=95133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}