200 km/hr winds in Invercargill, NZ

NZ: Winds just shy of 200kmh in Southland

A tree blew over at an address in Layard St, Invercargill on Saturday night. The house was not damaged.

The storm has passed and Southland is relatively unharmed despite a weekend of wild winds that almost reached 200kmh.

MetService meteorologist Claire Flynn said Southland recorded some strong winds on Saturday.

The strongest winds were recorded at Mid Dome in northern Southland, where speeds hit 193kmh, Flynn said

In Invercargill, winds of 113kmh were gusting between 1am and 2am on Sunday, while Gore got to 81kmh on Saturday night, Flynn said.

"We've got a ridge coming through so it should be calming down."

The Summer Sounds of Southland concert scheduled for Bluff on Sunday afternoon was postponed because of bad weather.

Venture Southland creative projects co-ordinator Angela Newell said the cold and blustery day would not have been ideal for people to be sitting around outside.

A new date would be announced soon, she said.

Further north, Wanaka fire fighters had to extinguish a tree after it caught fire when it fell on a power line in Halliday Rd, off the Wanaka-Luggate highway.

Southern Fire Communications shift manager Andrew Norris said Wanaka firefighters were called to the scene at 4.46am on Sunday.

The Wanaka fire crew, with the assistance of a tanker from Luggate, put out the fire after the power company isolated the power line, he said.

Senior Sergeant Craig Dinnissen, of the Southern District Command Centre, said police had not dealt with any wind-related issues at the weekend, apart from a few trees that had blown over.

Te Anau harbourmaster Kevin O'Sullivan said the weather hadn't caused any any issues in the town.

"Just a few branches on the road coming back to Invercargill."