Strong wind gusts this week have left another trail of destruction across Central Otago, including fallen trees and damaged property.

Fi Hewitt’s Springvale Rd property was slammed with high winds on Monday this week, causing a large tree to fall down, damaging her rotary clothes line in the process.

“I was almost pleased I wasn’t here when the tree came down. It would have been a huge noise.”

Fi Hewitt's clothes line has seen better days after a tree damaged it during strong winds earlier this week. PHOTO: Fi Hewitt.

There have been several strong wind watches in place for the district over recent weeks and in mid-December, last year, a tornado caused severe damage to a house, also on Springvale Rd. 

At the time, Fi was driving along Dunstan Rd, on her way home, when she noticed trees bending over.

“I could see the tornado and I thought it was a waterspout. I had family ring me that night asking if I was ok.”

Fi also recalls another serious wind event in the 1990s, which brought trees and power lines down, ultimately causing widespread fires.

“At the time they were saying they were about 130km/h [winds].”

Fi said her property was saved by a monsoon bucket.

“The whole property was like black toast.

“We’d just put 400 posts for grapes in . . . and we had three posts left standing.

“A lot of people lost a lot of stuff.”

Debris covers one of the board walks along the Alexandra to Clyde River Track during a rain event late last month. PHOTO: Alexia Anderson

Strong wind gusts are likely to remain in the weather forecast across Central Otago throughout spring.

MetService communications meteorologist Lewis Ferris said while this time of year typically features strong wind events, El Nino could add more than usual to the mix.

“Firstly, spring does tend to be the windiest season for a lot of the country and it’s a time where fast moving weather systems can be very frequent around our shores.

“So, given spring is typically pretty windy, we’re adding insult to injury when we think about the effects of El Nino.”

Trees and large branches came down during last weeks strong winds. PHOTO: Supplied

Parts of the district were left without power during last week’s wind event, including Alexandra, Omakau, Lauder, Ida Valley, Roxburgh and Ettrick.

Aurora Energy general manager operations and network performance spokesperson Matt Settle the team was happy with how the network held up against the extreme winds earlier in the week.

However, it did cause a number of unplanned outages associated with tree branches and other vegetation blowing into power lines.

He said people should keep well clear of damaged or fallen power lines and treat them as live at all times. 

Downed or damaged lines can be reported to Aurora Energy on 0800 22 00 05.

People can find up-to-date information about power outages on The Central App reports section click Power outages