The weather dominates the front pages of the main morning papers on Thursday.
NZ Herald
The New Zealand Herald says storms turned summer to misery for much of the South Island which was battered by gales, heavy rain and thunder storms.
Downpours washed away bridges, stranded holidaymakers, closed roads and left hundreds without access to phone lines.
Dominion Post
The Dominion Post headline is: "That's the holiday gone west". It says gales at Wellington airport caused hair-raising landings for passengers as well as flight cancellations and delays.
A washout of part of the bridge over the Wanganui River near Harihari on the West Coast has severed a fibre optic cable, cutting communication between 1000 homes and the rest of the country.
The Press
The Press says as many as eight vehicles were trapped in the lower Buller Gorge on Wednesday night after heavy rain caused two slips on State Highway Six between Inangahua Junction and Westport.
Beds in Arthur's Pass were in high demand after floodwater trapped tourists. A store owner there said the town had been hammered by rain for six days and has waterfalls she had never seen before.
ODT
The Otago Daily Times said three of the South Island's main tourist routes were closed on Wednesday night.
After being cut off by flooding, 120 Milford Track trampers arrived in Milford Sound, exhausted and unshowered, but upbeat.
The ODT is the only one of the papers to get the Black Caps being rolled for 45 on the front page.
Waikato Times
The Waikato Times leads on the Waihi Beach stabbing with police saying New Year's Eve photographs taken by revellers could hold clues to the attack. A man is critically wounded in hospital after the stabbing.
And the paper features a group of families who are spending their 10th summer holidaying together on the Coromandel. The familes met at antenatal classes at Waikato hospital in 1997 when the women were all pregnant with their first children.
