Some areas have brilliant sun, others wintry and gloomy. The main cold front as of 3:30pm lies draped over the South Island bringing a burst of rain to many places and then cold wintry showers afterwards, some with hail, sleet and snow above 100 or 200m. Snow showers are most likely overnight and into Wednesday for the South Island.

Like rain clouds, snow clouds break up when they move up the South Island – a bit hard to avoid with the huge Southern Alps sticking up.

New Zealand’s mountains and ranges often play a huge role in either protecting us from bad weather, or making weather more severe – it’s can sometimes be a double edged sword for us.

Here’s the very latest satellite map of New Zealand in high definitio as of mid-afternoon…the sunny/clear areas in the upper South Island and lower North Island will fade as this front moves northwards over this afternoon and into this evening.

Sunny/clear spells in Southland will fade away (and not just because the sun sets in an hour or so!) but because squally wintry showers are still marching northwards from the Southern Ocean. 

The clouds in the map below are generally tracking from the SW corner to the NE corner.

Image courtesy of the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA)

– WeatherWatch.co.nz