Australia Weather News

It was a surreal night for many Adelaide residents who had to find alternative ways to entertain themselves by candlelight, after wild weather caused a state-wide blackout.

Power was restored to all metro substations by 3:00am, but tens of thousands of residents in regional South Australia are still in the dark.

The power outage caused gridlock traffic in the city and all trains and trams came to a standstill late in the evening.

Resident Claire MacLennan spent her night gathered with mates at home, but not before helping a colleague's friend who was stranded in the CBD.

"One of my friend's colleagues was stuck at work and couldn't get home because it was gridlock in the city," she said.

"I got to her, she was training a guide dog, got the guide dog and drove her back to Henley Beach."

Ms MacLennan said she was shocked that the state could be hit by such a widespread outage.

"I was quite shocked. You always expect that there's a back-up system and you think 'it'll be an hour or so'," she said.

"We don't have any gas, we don't have any electricity, so one friend came over with some barbecue that she's cooked, another one who's got gas [came] over with pasta.

"It was quite a different night actually."

Housemate Ashleigh said as the night wore on, she became concerned she would also lose her mobile phone.

"It's really strange. It's really strange that I [was] starting to worry about my phone running out of battery, because once it's gone it's gone. There's nothing we can do," she said

"And it's really unusual to be in that position in your own home, in the middle of the city."

She said although she did not have too much difficulty leaving work, it was surreal to watch people leaving the city once the blackout hit.

"It was crazy. It felt like an apocalyptic film. Everybody was fairly calm and fine, but everyone was just streaming out of the city," she said.

Adelaide resident Chris Moon said his children turned to card games to pass the time.