New Zealand’s first major winter storm is due to hit this weekend, bringing snow, gales and downpours, coinciding with the start of school holidays.
Niwa is warning Kiwis a “polar jet stream” of Antarctic air mass is forecast to bring lowering snow levels, strong winds, low temperatures and wind chills.
MetService meteorologist Alain Baillie said higher areas around Queenstown could even see snow on Wednesday night, and more as temperatures in the area start to drop on Thursday.
“A front coming through Friday night into Saturday, that looks a pretty good possibility for some snow around the Queenstown area. So the snow level there, is down into the five, even 400m sort of area.”
However, Baillie said it was a bit far out to say whether this would reach the Queenstown township.
Temperatures are set to plunge, with lows of -1C from Thursday through to Sunday.
Ballie said the hills around Dunedin could also see some snow this weekend.
“Southland and, Dunedin, Saturday night and into Sunday, could see snow to quite low levels. There’s a very large cold pool moving over the region.”
Before the cold blast hits, parts of Otago are in for a drenching - MetService has issued a heavy rain watch for eastern parts of North Otago, Dunedin and Clutha, from 7pm today through to 10am tomorrow.
WeatherWatch.co.nz said the very large looming low-pressure zone would engulf the country in this year’s first major winter storm.
“It is a significant weather event which will intensify on Thursday, peak on Saturday and Sunday, then ease into next week,” the forecaster said.
It would bring severe gales, heavy snow, downpours and a drop in temperatures nationwide.
The storm was now brewing in the Southern Ocean.
Ballie said it would probably be the coldest storm we’ve seen this winter, and this would be a “good event” for southern ski resorts.
The north would not escape the polar blast with southerly winds ushering in the winter chill.
“The North Island is in for windy and certainly [in] the western, western and northern areas, it’s going to be very windy, and showery. We’ve had as you probably know, a lot of north easterlies, we’re now going into a south westerly flow and that south westerly flow is going to persist all the way through the weekend and there will be pulses of showers with that.”
From Thursday afternoon, and all the way through the weekend he said it was going to be “quite windy” and there’ll be quite a wind chill factor.
While maximum forecasts for Auckland would be in the order of 15 degrees, Ballie said it was not going to feel “anything like that”.
“It will feel somewhere in the range of six to 10 for most of the time.”
- additional reporting ODT Online
