CORRECTION:  The coldest time of the day is shortly after sunrise.  We apologise for the typo.

Cold air from the weekends winter blast is still hanging around creating severe frosts across New Zealand this morning. Head weather analyst Philip Duncan says temperatures have plummeted overnight with frosts as far north as Auckland. “The coldest time of the day is shortly after sunrise the furthest point since heat from the previous day’s sunlight. The 6:30am to 7:30am hour is usually the coldest time of the day and today is no different”.

Coldest Centres this morning:
Hamilton, Queenstown: -4
Taupo: -3
Rotorua, Blenheim, Christchurch: -2
Auckland, Nelson: -1

“Some regions where we don’t have weather stations such as National Park and some inland areas of the South Island will be around -6 this morning”.

But the cold air is on the way out – for a short time anyway – as another storm moves in. “On Thursday cloud and winds will build over the South Island, heading north during Friday and Saturday. Strong nor’westers, gale force at times in eastern areas from Dunedin to Napier, including Wellington, will move in. This will blow much of the weekends cold air out into the Pacific”.

Duncan says the tropical jet stream will dip over Northland bringing relatively mild weather to Auckland northwards.

Heavy rain is also expected along the West Coast with the Radio Network’s independent Weather atch Centre predicting some good rain falls for the hydro catchments.

The warmer spell will be short lived however. “By Saturday night or Sunday we’re expecting snow to return to Queenstown and Central Otago but we are not about to see a repeat of last weekends storm. This will be a rain and wind event not a snow and ice event”.

Duncan says the winds will be more westerly than southerly and temperatures as high as 10 degrees will return to Waiouru and the Central Plateau on Saturday.