Snow is falling on the South Island’s state highways, the NZ Transport Agency says.<\/p>\n
On Saturday night, the NZTA was advising drivers to be cautious on State Highway 8 between Omarama and Tarras, including the Lindis Pass, in Otago because of the snow.<\/p>\n
It comes after the MetService warned a wintry blast was on the way, bringing below-average temperatures and frosty conditions later in the week.<\/p>\n
Forecaster Gerard Bellam said a front was passing over the South Island on Saturday, with snow falling to 400m in Southland and Otago and 500m for the Canterbury region.<\/p>\n
He said the frosty weather could extend as far north as the Coromandel and Auckland later next week.<\/p>\n
A strong wind watch has been issued for Wellington, the Marlborough Sounds and the Kaik\u014dura Coast, and a heavy rain watch is in place for the Wairoa District.<\/p>\n
NZTA urged drivers to plan ahead.<\/p>\n
The worst falls were expected to affect major highways at Lewis Pass, Arthur’s Pass, Porters Pass, Lindis Pass and the Crown Range Road.<\/p>\n
NZTA said winter driving conditions could affect traction and urged drivers to slow down, increase their following distances, avoid sudden braking and to stay as visible as possible.<\/p>\n
It also recommended carrying warm clothing, food and water in case of travel delays or detours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Snow is falling on the South Island’s state highways, the NZ Transport Agency says. On Saturday night, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-569736","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\/569736","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=569736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}