Frosts blanket Northland this morning as temperatures fall to freezing across New Zealand. Photo \/ Denise Piper<\/p>\n
The coldest temperature in the country this morning was -9.7C at Mt Cook – though it feels more like -13C, according to the MetService website. That\u2019s not far off its coldest temperature this year of -11.5C last month.<\/p>\n
Christchurch dipped to -3.7C overnight \u2013 about 5C below its average overnight minimum \u2013 while Queenstown woke to -5C and Invercargill -4C.<\/p>\n
In Alexandra, frozen pipes forced the closure of the toilets at BMX park and Molyneux Park, the Central Otago District Council said. <\/p>\n
In the North Island, the coldest town this morning was Taumarunui at -5.6C. Hamilton was at -2.6C, Taup\u014d just under -2C and Rotorua -2.5C, according to MetService.<\/p>\n
In the winterless north, Kait\u0101ia had dipped to 0.4C at 6am, with MetService describing it as feeling like -3C. <\/p>\n
Auckland dipped to 2.7C overnight and is currently on 3.5C, though MetService says it feels like 1C.<\/p>\n
Parts outside central Auckland have awoken to subzero temperatures. At 8am Wait\u0101kere and Hunua were both on -2C, while Whenuapai in the city\u2019s northwest sat at -1.8C with a \u2018feels like\u2019 reading of -4C.<\/p>\n
MetService meteorologist Katie Lyons told the Herald that clear skies and a frigid Antarctic air mass had created ideal conditions for severe frosts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose clear skies just mean that there\u2019s no blanket to trap any of the heat, so it\u2019s all just escaping out to the atmosphere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Much of Auckland was in the \u201cfrost risk zone\u201d, Lyons said, with anything from -2C to around 4C forecast last night.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope anyone who has sensitive plants managed to tarp them or bring them inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
MetService warned that frosty conditions could cause icy roads and urged motorists to take extra care this morning.<\/p>\n
Much of Auckland is in the “frost risk zone”. Photo \/ Anna Heath <\/p>\n
Despite the freezing starts, much of the country could expect sunny, dry conditions during the day, Lyons said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very focused on these cold temperatures because it is really cold, but places will see lots and lots of sun about the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cold snap followed an Antarctic blast that brought snow, sleet and hail to parts of the country on Tuesday<\/a>, causing travel chaos in parts of the South Island and even snow flurries in Wellington<\/a>.<\/p>\n While this morning would bring the coldest conditions for much of the South Island, Lyons said parts of the North Island could become even colder overnight into Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re still in winter, so the days are still quite short. We\u2019ve still got lots of night-time for that heat to radiate out to the atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brown said 7.30am was expected to be the peak and if the generators are at maximum capacity, power…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[121157,275717,2840,95,806,13990,5432,3246,138,1667,44412,213822,78,1304,111,139,529,69,54323,10112,14182,275716,4497,38666,45291,1865,701,14039,8222,1455,80,12598],"class_list":["post-560291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-730am","tag-275717","tag-across","tag-and","tag-as","tag-below","tag-between","tag-both","tag-business","tag-energy","tag-freezing","tag-frosts","tag-in","tag-morning","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-plunge","tag-power","tag-shortage","tag-shortfalls","tag-start","tag-temperatures","tag-temps","tag-today","tag-tomorrow","tag-transpower","tag-warned","tag-warning","tag-zealand","tag-zero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560291","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=560291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}