Summer has left the building as the first taste of winter made itself known yesterday.
Temperatures plummeted as a cold snap hit the region, snow falling in parts of Central Otago.
The Danseys Pass Rd was closed at the gates past the hotel because of the ice and snow.
MetService meteorologist Mmathapelo Makgabutlane said a cold front started moving across the South Island on Monday and was set to continue into today.
"We’re expecting snowfalls at least in the mountainous areas — but also in the lower and sort of eastern parts of the South Island we could see the snow level going down to about 400 to 700 metres, which is the first snowfall of the year reaching those levels."
As well as this, there would be a “sharp southerly change" and strong winds along the eastern coastline, Ms Makgabutlane said.
Another MetService meteorologist, Alain Baillie, said tonight would be the coldest night of the year so far in a lot of places, while Niwa is warning this coming winter is likely to be the coldest in three years.
“For places like Central Otago, it’s going to be down around freezing and probably below [freezing] in the higher country,” Baillie said.
Alexandra is expected to get to -0C overnight, with an average temperature of around 12C.
Christchurch is expected to record an average of 11C with a 6C low, causing Transpower to urge residents to reduce electricity use last night to minimise the risk of power cuts due to surging electricity demand.
“A situation has occurred with electricity demand soaring because of unseasonable cold weather while a transformer at Islington substation is on a planned outage,” Transpower said.
The cold snap was not a sign that winter is coming early, Baillie said, with temperatures returning to normal by the weekend.
“By the weekend, pretty much the whole country’s got average temperatures again within a couple of degrees of, so, yeah, this is just a particularly strong cold front that’s moved up the country today,” Baillie said.
Meanwhile, Niwa’s Ben Noll said this winter may feel noticeably cooler compared with the past three years, with this week’s temperatures bringing a sign of what’s to come.
Noll noted the temperature in Invercargill climbed only as high as 11.9C yesterday, making for the coldest recorded March maximum since 2009.
That year happened to feature something scientists say is gradually under way now: the formation of an El Niño climate pattern.
Traditionally, this regime brings the opposite of La Niña, which has contributed to a trio of record-warm winters.
This month, scientists have been watching La Niña’s unusual three-year reign come to an end, with help from a tropical phenomenon called a westerly wind burst, which has effectively pushed it off the stage.
And as our climate state shifted toward El Niño, Noll said, we might not see as much of that abnormal winter warmth in 2023.
“The tendency may be for more southerly winds like we’re seeing this week,” he said.
“Over the last couple of winters, we saw more of a northerly wind pattern, which certainly isn’t what we’d consider a cold wind direction.
Noll said the winters of 2020, 2021 and 2022 had come in at 0.97C, 1.16C and 1.2C above average respectively – and last year’s also happened to be New Zealand’s wettest on record.
By Ruby Shaw-additional reporting NZ Herald
