Weather News

New Zealand hit by wintery blast

Guy Dixon, Monday May 25, 2015 - 11:09 AEST

A strong cold front sweeping over New Zealand is producing areas of heavy rain, gales and snow to sea level.

Residents of Napier, Hastings and Hawkes Bay awoke to relatively heavy snow flurries which have not been seen since August 2011 when snow also visited downtown Auckland.

Further south, parts of Fiordland, Otago, and Southland received heavy dumps as low as 200 metres overnight and in the wee hours of this morning.

Throughout the remainder of today, there is high confidence of snow falling as low as 300 metres along the east coast of the South Island, particularly within the vicinity of the Banks Peninsula, when the airmass is at its coldest this afternoon. The Met Service has issued warnings for the potential to see 10-15cm this afternoon leading to hazardous road conditions.

To add to the chaos, severe gales are forecast to impact parts of southern Otago and the Banks Peninsula driven by a deep low pressure system approximately 1400 kilometres to the southeast. To get an idea of the intensity of this system, the central pressure is forecast to drop to about 935 hPa, comparable to the most intense tropical cyclone this season in Australia.

Gusts of up to 130 km/h are a risk overnight and early tomorrow morning and have the potential to bring damage to property, trees and powerlines.

Conditions will begin to settle as a broad high pressure ridge takes hold from Thursday.

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2015

Enter a postcode or town name for local weather, or text to search the site. » advanced search

Weather News

» all stories

Bonsoy Gold Coast Pro surf forecast

07:00 AEST After an emotional mid-year cut at the Margaret River Pro surf competition in Western Australia last week, surfers that fell below the cut line, along with up-and-coming talent, will be battling it out on the Gold Coast from this weekend onwards. The first stop on the Challenger Series (the lesser format of the Championship Tour) will take place along the Gold Coast’s premier surf point breaks, starting this morning and running to Saturday May 4th.