Cyclone-strength gusts have lashed New Zealand's South Island and the capital Wellington, creating transport chaos and cutting power.

A state of emergency was declared in Canterbury due to the wild weather, which ravaged the nation on Thursday.

The spring storm arrived with inauspicious timing: on the day of the funeral for former NZ prime minister Jim Bolger, and the nation's biggest general strike in decades.

Up to 100,000 public servants, teachers and nurses were among professions to walk off the job, although for those in storm-hit regions, their protest was a SFH: strike from home.

Some health workers returned to the job in Nelson, where a back-up generator failed at the regional hospital.

Early on Thursday, the weather caused a mass power outage to around 90,000 homes in the reg

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