KEY POINTS:
Some residents in parts of Southland were still without electricity today after sudden snow dumps snapped powerlines and high winds tore out power poles.
Forty two homes around Clinton, 42km south-east of Gore, spent a second night without electricity following the outage at 1.15am yesterday.
In total, about 131 homes were affected, with linesmen restoring the power to about 89 of them yesterday.
Powernet assistant system control manager Roy Duffin said linesmen restored electricity to most of the cut-off houses before conditions forced them to retire.
"It was dark, and the men had been working all day. We expect to have the rest of the houses back on by tonight," he said.
Snow falls of up to a quarter of a metre had snapped power poles and overloaded the lines, causing them to break, he said.
Otago Power Services line foreman Murray Dickie told The Southland Times about 30 to 40 homes at Slope Down, Kuriwao and between the back of Mataura and Kaiwera were also affected by power outages yesterday.
Another outage at Mokoreta left 41 homes without power, but power was restored before 3pm yesterday.
Meanwhile, police have sent grit trucks to parts of Dunedin, after overnight icing made roads dangerous for motorists.
Senior Sergeant Brian Benn said no one had so far reported any accidents, though the patchy ice and cold temperature on the town's roads made for a possible hazard.
The MetService issued a severe weather warning for the Caitlins, saying there could be another 5 to 10 centimetres of snow above 300 metres on Saturday.
Forecaster Mark Pascoe said another 10cm of snow fell in Clinton overnight, with more snowclouds heading towards Southland and South Otago over the next day.
"After today it will all die away and we get into the severe frosts," he said.
Temperatures were not unusually low for the time of the year, measuring between one and three degrees Celsius, though there was a significant wind chill.
He also advised of snow showers in the Lindis and Milford passes.
- NZPA
