Hundreds of students, along with friends and families, filled George St to mark the milestone of graduation festooned in wet-weather apparel as well as caps and gowns.
And while temperatures struggled to get out of single digits yesterday, puffer jackets and sunglasses replaced umbrellas in the city as the skies cleared.
MetService meteorologist Alain Baillie said only 10mm fell in the city from midnight on Friday to midnight on Saturday — a fraction of the rain that fell in other parts of the country.
A low-pressure system moved over the North Island on Saturday that brought hundreds of millimetres of rain to the Manawatu-Whanganui region.
That system funnelled "quite a lot" of moist air down over the the entire country and brought some rain to Dunedin.
The low moved off to the east and yesterday afternoon was just north of the Chatham Islands.
Today, a front would brush Fiordland, Southland and Clutha and it might "sneak a shower into Dunedin" in the late afternoon, but there would generally be light winds and no serious rainfall was expected, Mr Baillie said.
"The eastern half of the South Island should have a fine day," he said.
Another front would move through tomorrow that could bring a spell of rain or showers in the evening, he said.
"And the next couple of days look OK."
