There’s still quite a bit of discussion about the wintry blast set to hit much of the country over the next 48 hours.

Where will snow fall? How much will there be? DIt’s not winter yet is it? Does this mean winter will be neverending then?

At the moment southerners are bearing the brunt of it but higher parts of the North Island could also see snow down to relatively low levels with the chance of reasonable falls.

Southland and Otago have seen conditions certainly vary inside the last 24 hours and today and tomorrow will see temperatures having a real edge to them as snow levels fall very low.

“it’ll be close to the freezing mark for some places in the south today and Tuesday” says weather analyst Richard Green.
“Icy winds combined with sleety snow showers will make roads marginal at best in some cases, possibly either today/tomorrow or both days”.

West Coasters are also seeing quite an active time with wintry conditions and temperatures also have dropped markedly.

Canterbury today could see some heavy showers later today or tonight with a blustery sou’ west change and a rumble or two of thunder may cross Banks Peninsula.

As far as snow is concerned for Christchurch during Tuesday weather analyst Aaron Wilkinson says “The air definitely looks cold enough for sea level snow I would think. This is a typical cold winter blast, no warm advection here for this Christchurch event and precipitation levels have even picked up slightly on the latest data through.

It will still be fairly coastal although there’s a chance showers could move a little more inland now on Tuesday afternoon / evening”.

WeatherWatch sees a risk of snow flurries up to 30-50 kilometres west of the city.

“One thing is that there could be a few sunny spells about on Tuesday morning and there is a chance that this may lift the temperature a little.
The showers move in to Chch more about midday through till evening, so because of a possible temperature spike, flurries may not occur till late afternoon perhaps (so when temperatures naturally start dropping away) then not hang around long before clearing later in the evening” Mr Wilkinson says.

So will there be snow on the ground for Christchurch by the end of Tuesday?
” We could see 1 or 2 cm about the city maybe. If the ground is a bit wet this can cause snow to not be able to settle well so could be another factor reducing possible settling amounts, so while snow may fall to sea level there is a slim chance not much may settle but up to 1 or 2cm is possible by the looks late afternoon / evening”.

Dunedin appears to be in line for higher snow amounts overall and other areas exposed to the south across Otago and Southland could also see some reasonable totals. 

-WeatherWatch