Dunedin residents in the hill suburbs may be late for work on Tuesday as a polar blast hits the city on Monday night.<\/p>\n
MetService forecaster Gerard Bellam said\u00a0a very cold front would hit Stewart Island on Monday\u00a0morning and travel up the east coast of the South Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen behind that, we\u2019re seeing a\u00a0very cold outbreak of strong southwest winds coming all the way up from the ice [Antarctica].\u201d<\/p>\n
It was expected to bring snow down to low levels and winds gusting up\u00a0to 90kmh, from South Otago, past Dunedin and into North Otago, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo as we go overnight, in\u00a0to Tuesday\u00a0morning, we\u2019re expecting snow down to about 200 metres, and that will affect Dunedin\u2019s hill suburbs\u00a0and the motorway heading out of the city as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is probably the coldest outbreak of this year, we\u2019re thinking, but it\u2019s\u00a0mostly confined to the coastal areas\u00a0of eastern Otago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0not really penetrating that much inland.\u201d<\/p>\n
MetService has already issued a\u00a0road snowfall warning for the Dunedin to Waitati Highway (SH1), from 7pm on Monday night until 10am on Tuesday, when up to\u00a04cm (possibly more) could fall above 200m.<\/p>\n
The snow also had the potential to create dangerous driving conditions around\u00a0the higher suburbs of Dunedin \u2014\u00a0particularly Pine Hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly, we don\u2019t need much \u2014\u00a0one or two centimetres is enough to cause disruption on those higher roads,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could provide some dicey driving conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the thing is, I\u2019ve noticed recently in these frosty outbreaks in Central Otago, and even up in the North Island, there has been quite a lot of minor crashes\u00a0\u2026\u00a0so it needs to be pointed out to them [drivers].\u201d<\/p>\n
He urged residents to keep an eye on the forecast in case\u00a0heavy snow and severe gale warnings were issued.<\/p>\n
For the rest of the week, a large high pressure system was expected to sit over Otago and Southland, bringing clear skies and frosty mornings with temperatures dropping to -6\u02daC, he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
john.lewis@odt.co.nz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dunedin residents in the hill suburbs may be late for work on Tuesday as a polar blast hits…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-556537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556537","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=556537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}