Temperatures are tumbling as a southerly spreads up the South Island today. The cold front is bringing rain and then afterwards some snow showers, mostly above 200 or 300m. 

As you can see from the Live Observations we display at WeatherWatch.co.nz most places are dropping into the mid to low single digits behind this front.

WeatherWatch.co.nz has had reports of snow flurries in Queenstown and Wanaka and snow showers will likely be more common overnight above a couple hundred metres.

We’re continually crunching the numbers on potential for snow to sea level and once again we must emphasise that sea level snow is NOT the main focus of this event, even if is briefly possible in some parts of Dunedin, for example. Dunedin’s hill top suburbs have the main snow risk.

Generally speaking snow will be heavy above 100 or 200metres – but due to the particular wind flows and mountains some areas may be just cold but fairly dry over the coming days (for example, rain clouds often miss places like Wanaka and Twizel or Alexandra, so snowy weather is no different – there will be some places in a high risk for snow but may only end up with a few flurries due to lack of moisture making it through the mountains/over the ranges).

However as moisture from the north east of New Zealand joins this southerly we may see much higher snowfall totals, like in the mountains behind Kaikoura in the upper eastern South Island, or the Ruahine or Tararua Ranges of the Lower North Island which might get over half a metre of snow high up away from where most people live – but some people do live in these areas and so generally anyone living above 200m in the South Island and 300-400m in the lower North Island may have travel problems due to heavy snow over the next few days.

Remember while this is a bitterly cold wintry event with severe weather potential, it’s not an Antarctic storm so the air being dredged up is not as cold as it could be. 

Keep an eye on our Live Observations page as the cold front moves northwards today, tonight and into Wednesday and Thursday.

– Image – Observations as of 3:10pm Tuesday, click for LIVE version

– WeatherWatch.co.nz