Detailed Antarctic Blast Update — A significant wintry blast is moving into the country and brutal wind chills from the Antarctic region are coming in.

In this video we display something brand new – the Misery Index – which shows wind-chills of -15 to -25 possible around alpine parts of the South Island.

Meanwhile the bitterly cold air with run into heavy rain over the central and eastern North Island – with very heavy snow about the plateau and eastern ranges (watch for road closures), heavy rain in the east and gales in the south and west.

It’s a rough Saturday for the North Island with major frosts hitting the South Island overnight and into Sunday. It’s a very busy forecast – Philip Duncan has the latest on New Zealand’s weather.

**Please note this player can take 60 seconds to start – for instant playback use the video on the right hand side of our homepage, or in our free app. (we hope to fix this later this year by the way!)