Chill will descend on South Island after gusty weekend

South Islanders can expect a couple of days of winter chill after a mild weekend which saw gale-force north-westerly winds toppling power lines throughout Canterbury.

About 1000 customers of Mid-Canterbury lines company Orion New Zealand lost electricity for several hours on Saturday afternoon and night as a result of the gusty winds.

The worst blackouts were around Springston and Hororata, where some residents had to wait four hours while emergency workers reconnected lines before their power supplies returned to normal.

Orion chief executive Roger Sutton said lines seemed to have been broken mainly by wind blowing trees or branches down.

Power was also cut to parts of Arthurs Pass, especially around the Temple Basin Skifield, for nearly three hours yesterday morning after what looked like problems caused by lightning, Sutton said. Electricity was restored there soon after 1pm. "It was probably one of the biggest days this year for the emergency crews. But more than 99 per cent of our customers were back on (Saturday) night," he said.

Orion has about 20,000 rural customers out of a total of 180,000 customers.

MetService severe weather forecaster Oliver Druce said the nor-west flow was very strong across the South Island on Saturday. Wind gusts reached close to 150kmh at Mount Somers and were even stronger at high levels and in parts of Central Otago.

A cold front moving up the South Island yesterday afternoon was bringing a change to much colder south to south-westerly winds.

Heavy showers with hail were expected last night and today, with snow to about 500m in Canterbury and 300m in Otago and Southland. A severe weather warning was not warranted, Druce said.