The flood waters from the weekend’s flash flood is Southland have begun to recede almost as quickly as they came. It their wake are somewhat shell-shocked farmers left to count their stock and assess the damage after what had already been a particularly trying week of weather in the region. 

Snow blanketed Southland for three days at the start of last week and – just when the weather was starting to perk up – heavy rain hit.

Rural Support Trust chair Cathie Cotter said the weekend flooding in Southland really seemed to come out of nowhere and took the rural community by surprise.

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“The rivers came up incredibly fast, usually we have quite a bit of notice with our systems, with knowing when the water is going to arrive but this time it was really sudden,” she said.

“Some farmers got 50-70 ml of water in under 12 hours… so that’s a lot of water to deal with.”

She said there was a lot of surface flooding, that farmers didn’t normally have to cope with.

Photo taken by Ben and Sarah Dooley on their farm at Mimihau.

“Some farmers were really stretched to be able to get their stock off, and we do know that some stock has been lost… not huge numbers but some farmers did lose a few sheep here and there.

She said the trust was still phoning around the farming community to get an overview of the damage but said one farmer in the region had told them he had lost around 35 hoggets.

“Most farmers are continuing to do well, they’re resilient souls the old Southern farmers.”

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However, she encouraged farmers to not trudge on and get on with the clean-up work alone, but to call the Rural Support Trust 0800 number if they needed help.

Weekend flash-flooding different nature to February floods

Emergency Management Southland Group Manager Angus McKay said the weekend’s flooding in Southland was different to the severe flooding Southland had in February this year, which was connected to longer periods of sustained rain making the rivers overflow. 

“This was just fairly constant rain over about 24 hours in coastal areas and across eastern southland… so it wasn’t really the rivers it was just the amount of water on the ground.”

Photo taken by Ben and Sarah Dooley on their farm at Mimihau.

“And with the ground being so wet from the last few weeks it just became too much for the existing drains and culverts to cope with.”

“There were no weather warnings or weather watches for rain, it was just that we had constant rain over 24 hours,” he said.

He said flooding from steady rain like this was an ongoing issue for Southland due to a lot of the area being so flat. 

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“We live in such a flat part of the world, I know the local councils are looking at all the areas where they’ve had problems, and yesterday the contractors were tremendous cleaning out culverts and pumping some of the water away. But it’s really just an ongoing thing, if we get too much water for the drains and that the ground can’t cope with, we’re always going to have a problem. 

He encouraged people in rural areas who may have been affected by the flooding to get in touch with the Rural Support Trust. Anyone experiencing issues from the recent flooding should contact Civil Defence. 

More rain is forecast for tomorrow morning in Southland, so Mr McKay advised people to take extra care on the road.

• Rural Support Trust: 0800 787 254
• Civil Defence: 0800 768 845

West Plains Road, Invercargill. PHOTO: Lucy Henry