The Remarkables mountain range, as seen from Jack’s Point. Photo \/ Brianna McIlraith<\/p>\n
Heavy snowfall closed the Crown Range Rd, stranded vehicles, shut a school and created hazardous driving conditions across parts of Central Otago today. <\/p>\n
Cold temperatures are expected to persist over the weekend, with the possibility of severe frosts for inland areas, MetService said. <\/p>\n
Snow will reach 400m for parts of the South Island this afternoon and evening, and 1100m in southern parts of the North Island overnight.<\/p>\n
Mount Cook Village is expected to hit a maximum temperature of only 1C tomorrow, according to the MetService. <\/p>\n
Watches and Warnings<\/p>\n
Several severe weather watches and warnings for wind, rain, swells and snowfall have been issued across New Zealand. <\/p>\n
An orange strong-wind warning for Wellington and parts of Marlborough lasts until 6pm tomorrow, with gusts of 120km\/h expected in exposed places.<\/p>\n
Waves of up to 7m are predicted around the southern North Island, prompting heavy swell warnings for the coasts around Wellington and Wairarapa. <\/p>\n
Watches and warnings around the country. Photo \/ MetService<\/p>\n
Strong wind watches for Northland north of Whang\u0101rei, Taranaki and Whanganui, the Tararua Range, Wairarapa south of Masterton, parts of Wellington, as well as Buller, Grey, and Westland have been issued. <\/p>\n
A heavy rain watch is in effect for Gisborne\/Tair\u0101whiti and Wairoa from this evening to Friday afternoon, and for the Tararua Range, Wairarapa south of Masterton, and Wellington (excluding Porirua) from Friday morning to Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
Road snowfall warnings are for Lindis Pass (State Highway 8), Porters Pass (SH73), Arthur\u2019s Pass (SH73), and Lewis Pass (SH7).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MetService meteorologist Michael Pawley said respite would come this weekend as the system moves east. \u201cRunners of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[806,51,22398,11154,1565,651,27254,5760,5616,4999,172602,20589,33262,111,43,139,69,90,21532,2735,18835,109209,274,1455,23366,18980],"class_list":["post-494390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-as","tag-auckland","tag-aucklanders","tag-begins","tag-bridge","tag-close","tag-disruptions","tag-force","tag-forecast","tag-friday","tag-gale","tag-harbour","tag-hour","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-rush","tag-store","tag-strong","tag-threaten","tag-travel","tag-warning","tag-weekends","tag-winds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}