Landslide collapses Far North road 

Source: ONE News

Wild weekend weather continues to cause havoc with part of State Highway 10 in the Far North collapsing under the weight of a major landslide.

Police were alerted to the slip when a truck nearly rolled off the road at about 6am Monday, Senior Sergeant Shane Mulcahy of northern police communications says.

The highway is now closed as roading authorities investigate.

And drivers in Otago and South Canterbury are being warned to take care as black ice makes travelling treacherous. Police say there is ice on the road in and around Dunsandel and the Burnham areas in Canterbury. Spokesman Hemi Waretini says as a result a car has smashed into the Selwyn River Bridge.

Waretini says there is also a lot of black ice on the roads in and around Dunedin, Mosgiel and Middlemarch.

Snow and ice has also closed SH1 at the Desert Road.

Meanwhile, electricity has been restored to most homes in Northland, Auckland and the Coromandel after thousands were cut off when high winds felled trees that downed powerlines.

A spokeswoman for Vector says 6400 of its customers experienced outages over the weekend but only a few were still without power.

Phone lines were also cut, and "wire snaps" at 175 Northland homes could take several days to repair, a Telecom spokesman says.

The deep low that brought the severe weather is expected to move slowly away from the country on Monday, MetService says.

However, rain will continue to drench Gisborne with a further 40mm to 60mm expected along with gales.

Most services restored

Power has now been restored to most homes in Northland that had benn cut off by the weekend's storm.

Heavy rain and gale-force winds left 12,000 homes in the dark.

More than 200 Telecom customers were also left without phone lines after the weekend's wild weather. Chorus network spokesman Robin Kelly says a cabinet in the small Hokianga township of Kohukohu has been damaged, affecting about 100 customers.

Phones are also out in the Far North settlement of Pukenui. Kelly says that outage affects about 120 people and is likely to take most of the day to restore.