The wild winds knocked over thousands of trees and skittled hundreds of power poles, leaving tens of thousands without power.
As of yesterday afternoon, only 65 customers remained without electricity, down from 50,000 immediately after the October 23 storm.
Clutha District Mayor Jock Martin this morning officially declared the district was moving from emergency mode to recovery mode.
He said a "gargantuan effort" had gone into getting the power back on, infrastructure reconnected and the worst of the debris cleared.
"I'd like to personally thank all the people who have worked with us as a council and especially the community, many of whom have done it hard through the past 15 days, without power, water and their usual resources. Your resilience and determination to get through has been a thing to behold."
While the emergency phase was a sprint, the recovery would take a lot longer, he said.
"We also know that the recovery will be a marathon, a long road to get everything fixed, the fences repaired and for people to go about their normal lives again."
Emergency Management Southland also said the region was moving into recovery mode.
Invercargill City Council group manager Rex Capil has been appointed the region's recovery manager.
He told Morning Report authorities were monitoring critical services like electricity and water.
"They have for some time now been operating as per normal but it's just one of those things, especially with fluctuations of power and supply of power, that we'll continue to monitor."
Many parks and reserves were still closed until authorities had assessed any potentially unstable trees, he said.
"We've never experienced the winds and the brutality of the weather that we did two weeks ago."
Capil said authorities were yet to tally the true cost of the storm.
"I think one thing that will probably bubble to the surface in the next few weeks, which we haven't really had an eye on is just the economic impact - the economic impact on our agricultural areas and primary producers and production services, but also coming into a pretty significant tourism season."
The last PowerNet update on Thursday showed there were 65 customers still without power across Clutha and Southland.
PowerNet today said: "We know there are still customers without power and we are working to get this restored. Please let us know if you do not have power and haven't heard from us."
- additional reporting Allied Media
