Wild weather causing havoc in Christchurch, heavy rain heading for Wellington tonight

Heavy rain is causing surface flooding on more than a dozen roads in Christchurch, including Curletts Rd. Photo / CTOC

Wild weather is causing havoc in Christchurch with flights delayed and cancelled, thousands without power, surface flooding on the roads, tree branches down and lifting a roof of a house.

The storm has brought down branches from trees and cut power to thousands of homes in Christchurch and Banks Peninsula this afternoon.

A roof has lifted off a house in Sumner and loose roofing iron has also been swept off buildings in the central city.

More than four thousand homes in Christchurch and Banks Peninsula were without power earlier this evening with some expected to remain out into tomorrow morning.

By 8pm Orion had restored power to about 2400 customers, with around 1600 remaining without power.

Orion general manager of infrastructure Steve Macdonald said multiple outages in 11 different locations were slowing restoration efforts.

"Our network has been damaged in many places, and our crews will not be able to safely identify the work involved, and fix all the faults tonight," he said.

"Unfortunately, this means some customers will need to be prepared to be without power until the morning.

"We'd like to thank people for their patience, and advise them to call our Contact Centre which operates throughout the night, for updates."

The strong winds also meant Air New Zealand ground staff in Christchurch could not work on the tarmac causing delays to seven regional cities and one cancellation.

Jet operations from Christchurch Airport continued to operate largely to schedule.

Customers booked to travel on a regional service from Christchurch tonight were advised to check the arrivals and departure page on the Air New Zealand website for their flight status.

Heavy rain caused surface flooding on more than a dozen roads - including Papanui, Lincoln, Riccarton and Blenheim roads.

The fire service had received 30 calls between 4pm and about 6.30pm.

MetService meteorologist Andrew James said the bad weather hitting Christchurch at the moment will ease within the next hour.

"There's just a few showers in behind that front and then things will be noticeably better when it's gone."

However, Wellington should brace itself as a new system was expected to bring heavy rain and wind this evening before easing overnight.

Tomorrow the capital would be hit by bad weather again as the same front that caused havoc in Christchurch this afternoon moves north.

James said as the front moved north of Wellington the weather was unlikely to be as bad in the rest of the North Island due to a ridge forming over the country that would calm it down.

"Generally tomorrow will be a better day than today."

Western parts of the North Island including Whanganui, Palmerston North and Hamilton were also drenched with rain today, while Auckland and Northland had scattered showers.

The second part of the week looked better with fine weather expected in most of New Zealand.