Blackout for thousands of SA properties after more storm damage

Thousands of properties are without power this morning due to yesterday’s storm damage, as damaging wind gusts are expected to redevelop across southern parts of the state today.

The Bureau of Meteorology said another vigorous cold front and westerly winds should cross parts of the south and east today.

A severe weather warning for damaging winds is in place for Adelaide as well as the Mount Lofty Ranges, Lower Eyre Peninsula, Eastern Eyre Peninsula, Yorke Peninsula, Mid North, Kangaroo Island, Murraylands, Upper South East, Lower South East and parts of West Coast, Flinders, Riverland and North East Pastoral districts.

The Bureau of Meteorology said westerly winds averaging 40 to 60 kilometres per hour with damaging gusts up to 100kph were possible over the warning area on Sunday.

Meteorologist Jenny Horvat told ABC Radio Adelaide wind gusts of 100kph were recorded at Mount Crawford and Kadina yesterday and 94kph at Edinburgh.

At the peak around 13,000 people lost power last night due to the storm, but connections were gradually being restored.

Outages have hit suburbs across Adelaide, ranging from Two Wells in the north to O’Halloran Hill in the south, as well as in the Riverland.

Most metropolitan outages on the SA Power Networks website have an estimated restoration of sometime on Sunday.

But SA Power Networks’ Paul Roberts told ABC Radio Adelaide that the Riverland was hit particularly hard yesterday and required “significant work to be done”.

“And my guess is there will be some without power tomorrow … so people should be prepared for some longer extended outages,” he said.

“But we are obviously endeavouring to do everything we can to restore their power as soon as possible.”

The latest outages come a week after a severe storm left thousands of properties without power for days and damaged an interconnector leaving South Australia unable to export its surplus energy to the national grid.