Wild weather cuts power to thousands

Fierce winds have caused havoc in Wairarapa with multiple powercuts affecting thousands of people.

Yesterday morning, winds were strong enough to bring down a power pole on Cologne St, Martinborough, cutting power to 360 properties, said Phil Marsh, Powerco's network operations manager.

Since Saturday night, 3000 people in Featherston, Martinborough and Masterton had been affected by the outages, said Mr Marsh.

Metservice said it had recorded wind gusts up to 120km/h in the Rimutaka Hills yesterday morning.

Electricity had since been restored to all areas by Powerco, a company that supplies electricity and gas across the North Island.

A local business owner on Cologne St, who was without power for most of yesterday morning, said a large crew of workers had turned up to fix the power pole.

Mish Warrington, who works at Thrive, a retail store on Kitchener St, said power was out at the shop yesterday and had also gone out on Sunday.

She said business was not greatly affected.

Cafe Medici owner Nick Arnold said his cafe had power but the other side of Kitchener St didn't.

Metservice warnings of gales and strong winds were lifted for Wairarapa except for Castlepoint, which has a gale warning in place until tonight.

Rough seas are also expected.