Dozens of flights were cancelled and trees and vehicles blown over as high winds left a trail of chaos across the South yesterday.
By 5pm, Aurora Energy was reporting on its website that more than 1000 Dunedin households were without power.
Communities in Warrington, Karitane, Puketeraki and Seacliff were reconnected late last night.
Network Waitaki and Powernet also faced widespread outages due to strong winds blowing debris into power lines.
A shed was blown into powerlines in Oamaru.
The high winds meant it was unsafe for linemen to attempt to reconnect power in many areas last night.
A caravan was blown on to its roof south of Hampden, on SH 1, and a campervan was blown on its side on the road to Mt Cook, SH 80.
A police spokeswoman said the caravan blocked SH 1 for a period.
Airports were also in chaos as high winds caused mass-cancellations at Queenstown and Dunedin.
Dunedin Airport marketing and customer experience manager Chris Snow said at 3pm there had been 14 cancellations affecting eight arrivals and six departures.
Queenstown had 36 cancellations.
Queenstown Airport chief operating officer Todd Grace said winds and wet weather had severely affected the schedule.
"It’s obviously inconvenient when travel is disrupted, and we appreciate people’s understanding," Mr Grace said.
A passenger on a flight bound for Queenstown yesterday morning said passengers were screaming amid violent turbulence after the plane turned around because of strong winds.
Dylan Steele, 18, was on a Jetstar flight from Auckland to Queenstown and said passengers were screaming as the plane shook violently about 20 minutes out from Queenstown.
"The plane was going up and then dropping rapidly. I was airborne on my seat. It was just so wild."
A Jetstar spokesman said the flight hit turbulence on the return flight to Auckland
MetService Meteorologist Amy Rossiter said the strongest wind gust recorded in Otago yesterday was at Nugget Point, south of Dunedin.
"That was 170kmh which was recorded at 4pm once that southwesterly had come through."
Miss Rossiter said a series of fast-moving fronts moved up the country yesterday which linked into a deep low pressure system towards the southeast.
"We also had a really strong pressure gradient which brought these really strong northwesterly winds then southwesterly winds.
"One of the typical characteristics of the El Nino flow is it likes to enhance those strong westerlies. It is one of its most typical characteristics."
Port Otago was closed due to high winds and cargo ships opted to brace against the winds at sea.
Port Otago chief executive Kevin Winders said the port signalled to ships they were likely to close the port due to winds.
"The master of the ship Nicolai Maersk chose to leave the berth and go out on to anchor given the conditions so they could go and hide around the bay,
"Depending on the wind direction, anything up to 35 knots is tolerable, but we were gusting well over 50 knots.
"They were pretty treacherous conditions out of there," Mr Winders said.
