Phone and internet services in coastal Buller have been restored

West Coast Emergency Management says it's been in regular contact with Chorus during the outage which lasted for several hours in the early evening.

An Emergency Operations Centre was opened in Hokitika this morning, but those operations are now based in Greymouth as the weather system moves north.

The West Coast Regional Council's hydrologists are watching the impact of rain on the rivers, with flooding still likely in a number of places.