Southland Storm: Lessons Learned from Extreme Weather Disruption

While the rest of the world (and in fact NZ too) continue their lives in oblivion, Southland was brought to its knees on Thursday 23 October 2025 when a storm, forecast to hit Canterbury, hit Southland instead with full force.

The speed at which it came in was somewhat freaky. There was a strange eerie stillness in the morning, oppressive humidity and temperatures in excess of 24 degrees, very unusual for spring in this region. but, within 20 mins, the weather changed to gale / hurricane force winds in excess of 180kmph which caused much more destruction than the accompanying rain. The entire weather system left as rapidly as it arrived, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

It is estimated around 300 trees came down in queens park alone. Who knows how many in Southland as a whole. We only live 10km out of town but were without power for almost 4 days. Bearing in mind that we are not on mains water where we live, running water also depends on power for the water pump. over 100 cell towers were down, their backup generators only keeping them operational to the end of Thursday at best. over 35,000 people in Southland were without power (and almost 6000 are still without power).

In total, we had no power, no cell coverage and no running water, for almost 4 days.

There were a few things we did have that helped us cope, and one or two that we would (and already are) doing differently to prepare in case this happens again. With the world’s weather getting crazier and crazier each year, we believe there is a very high chance that extreme weather like this could become much more common.

Things that helped us cope

• Yunka multi fuel fire in the lounge that has a hotplate cook top.
• We had just renovated our BBQ, got more gas and it was on the verandah.
• multiple power banks that always have at least some charge in them,
• Ability to override the electric garage door and electric gates on the drive (phew!)
• Had a supply of candles in the house and packs of wet wipes.
• We had alternative ways to amuse ourselves (reading, drawing, etc!)

We traveled the 10km into town every day and a lovely local cafe manager allowed us to sit in their warm cafe and charge our devices. They even filled used milk cartons with water for us to take away. By day 3, I called on a local friend who allowed us to use her dishwasher and washing machine, while also using her shower. (Massive thanks).

The thing I found to be the most challenging was having no running water. The sudden aspect of it all almost sent me into melt down. But, when I sat back and had a think about it, we were pretty well prepared all in all. We usually do grocery shopping on a Saturday and run our fridge and freezer to almost empty each week. so we lost very little in the way of perishables that had to be thrown out because the fridge was off.

What we would are doing differently

Before we even had the power restored, we were already online looking to buy a generator. This is a common requirement in more rural communities as a backup, but not something many people so close to a city had thought necessary. Nevertheless, it is on order and will be connected by Peter as backup power to our switchboard. That means that if there was another power cut, although the power we would have on backup would be a little more limited, it would be enough to run our water pump and heat the hot water. Personally that alone makes it worthwhile in my opinion. There are a lot of other people locally that were wishing they had already done the same thing!

This was not a cost we had planned for, but neither was the costs associated with having 4 days without power, so it’s a no brainer!