A night of heavy rain and strong winds has left some properties still without power in Whanganui. Photo/ Bevan Conley
A wild night of weather with wind gusts reaching up to 80km/h cut power to 3170 Whanganui properties on Monday night.
On Tuesday morning 25 properties were still without power.
MetService meteorologist Ngaire Wotherspoon said at 3am there was 9.4mm of rain in just one hour.
“Some people might have been woken up by that.”
At 9pm on Monday wind gusts were up to 80km/h.
A Powerco spokesman said there were two unplanned outages affecting multiple customers in the Whanganui region overnight.
The first occurred at 7.18pm in the Bastia Hill area.
Initially, 3145 customers were affected but power was progressively restored over the following hour and all customers were reconnected by 8.13pm.
“Crews are returning to site today to conduct testing to determine the cause of the outage.”
The second outage occurred in the Parikino area northwest of Whanganui.
Power went off for 25 customers at 7.45pm and field crews were dispatched to the area.
They patrolled the area looking for the cause of the overhead line outage.
The work was paused once it got dark, due to the windy conditions making it too dangerous to continue.
“Crews are returning this morning to resume patrols so that the site of the outage can be located and repair work carried out.”
Wotherspoon said over the past 24 hours Whanganui experienced 23.2mm of rain.
There were still showers passing through on Tuesday and it would continue to “feel like a rainy day”.
Monday had brought an intense front, but the weather should calm down into Tuesday evening.
Wind gusts would remain about 60km/h.
A Whanganui District Council spokeswoman said as a result of the weather the council received two callouts about fallen branches.
A contractor visited the sites and cleared them on Tuesday.
There was also a minor slip on Papaiti Rd which was cleared early on Tuesday morning.
Eva de Jong is a reporter for the Whanganui Chronicle covering health stories and general news. She began as a reporter in 2023.
Comment: Planting a range of trees will give fruit at different times of the year.