Gales cause power lines havoc

Gale-force winds kept Scanpower's lines crews busy on Sunday afternoon, network operations controller Warren Harris has said.

"We had a beat-up from the high winds with clashing wires causing a major fault which cut power to customers at 2.30pm on Sunday," he said.

"It's one of those things you expect along Top Grass Rd where the wind blasts through."

Mr Harris said the high winds caused difficulties for his staff and in some cases they made the lines safe and returned later to do full repairs and switch power back on.

"It's a balancing act," he said. "We need to look after our staff and ensure their safety as well as making sure we can get the power on to our customers."

The power was out for a number of customers in the Top Grass Rd block south, through Maharahara, as well as to homes and farms along State Highway 2 at the Matahiwi Hill end of the district.

"We were able to start switching electricity on to those southern customers by 3pm and everyone had their power restored by 5pm," Mr Harris said. "We had extra staff on deck and yesterday morning [Monday] crews were out mopping up a few power outages to some individual customers.

"The scale of Sunday's outage was wide, but we also had an issue with Transpower as well, which didn't help the situation."

The Dannevirke Volunteer Fire Brigade had just one weather-related callout to a home in Swinburn St when high winds began lifting the roof.

November has been a month of all seasons in Dannevirke, with heavy rain, hail, sleet, snow and gale-force winds, while in Norsewood, rainfall figures paint a wet picture.

"We had 69mm for the month, in a month where our rainfall can vary by a huge amount," said Norsewood weather watcher Lyn McConchie.

"We've had anywhere from 20mm to 200mm, so this year you could say the November rainfall was a little on the light side, but it definitely wasn't dry.

"December is going to be the month which will show if we'll have a dry summer here.

"The usual December rainfall average is around 100mm. If we do get that, it won't be a very dry summer, if we don't, well ... it may be."