MetService had forecast heavy snow above 600m, with lesser amounts down to 400m, before conditions eased from the south overnight.<\/p>\n
Meteorologist Sophie Huntington said snow was expected to have largely cleared from the lower South Island before dawn, but urged motorists to remain cautious on roads this morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs it\u2019s colder overnight, it\u2019s not going to melt as much as it would in the daylight,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce the day breaks in the morning, that should help melt any that\u2019s about.\u201d<\/p>\n
The snow risk shifts further north this morning, with road snowfall warnings in place for Porters, Arthurs and Lewis passes.<\/p>\n
Between 2cm and 5cm could accumulate near the summit of Porters Pass before 11am, with lesser amounts down to 500m.<\/p>\n
Around 1cm or less is forecast near the summit of Arthurs Pass between 4am and 10am.<\/p>\n
Rain could turn to snow above 800m on Lewis Pass between 9am and 2pm, with about 1cm possible near the summit.<\/p>\n
Temperatures were also forecast to dip below freezing in places, with Twizel reaching -2C and Alexandra -1C.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be chilly, definitely, but not what we were experiencing a month ago,\u201d Huntington said.<\/p>\n
Further north, the front is bringing heavy rain up the West Coast.<\/p>\n
Huntington said Westport and the wider Buller area would be waking to wet conditions as the slow-moving system reached the northwest of the South Island.<\/p>\n
A heavy rain watch is in force for Buller until 1pm, with rainfall amounts potentially approaching warning criteria, particularly about the ranges.<\/p>\n
Haast recorded 9.2mm of rain in the hour to 5pm yesterday, Huntington said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still going to be heavy in those Buller, Westland areas, but not as bad as it was earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n
The system was expected to weaken as it travelled north, while conditions were expected to improve across much of the South Island behind it.<\/p>\n
Rain is forecast to develop around Wellington and surrounding areas during the afternoon or evening.<\/p>\n
Auckland can expect cloudy periods and isolated light showers before showers become more frequent in the evening, when brief heavy falls are possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might be heavy but quite short-lived,\u201d Huntington said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MetService had forecast heavy snow above 600m, with lesser amounts down to 400m, before conditions eased from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,651,5201,28157,5346,19876,305,20384,296,2514,130,1304,296931,111,43,139,69,6633,1240,38666,1961,1237,4998,45293,102],"class_list":["post-602528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-and","tag-close","tag-closed","tag-dropped","tag-expected","tag-flooding","tag-have","tag-highways","tag-into","tag-island","tag-more","tag-morning","tag-negatives","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-snow","tag-south","tag-temperatures","tag-this","tag-two","tag-weather","tag-wintry","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602528","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=602528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}