Mid-Summer snow was falling and settling on Porters Pass this afternoon in the South Island, along with hail and other winter conditions on Arthurs Pass reports WeatherWatch.co.nz.
WeatherWatch.co.nz’s West Coast reporter, Andy Thompson, says traffic is heavier than usual and describes the current weather conditions as “completely winter-like”.
WeatherWatch.co.nz exclusively predicted the cold snap a week ago and says reports coming in to the weather news authority from Southland to Canterbury talk of people lighting fires, turning on heaters and heat pumps and generally saying it feels like the middle of winter. Temperatures today struggled to reach the double digits in many parts of the South Island. In fact, it was just 9 degrees at Christchurch this afternoon. The average high for today is 23.
WeatherWatch.co.nz says summer will return by Tuesday.
In fact, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are looking dry and comfortable. A front may bring rain to the country for end of the week. But dry weather should return to make the upcoming weekend very summery as well.
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Ian on 22/01/2012 10:43pm
Had a spectacular thunderstorm in Woodend about 8pm yesterday. We had rain in the morning, then sunny afternoon, until the storm hit. It folowed the usual recipes for thunderstorms in our part of the country, the rare occasions where a southerly comes up in to an onshore easterly.
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Ian on 20/11/2014 12:24am
Just to follow what David said, the Woodend thunderstorm last night was very spectacular. The usual recipe of easterly into southerly front. One flash of ligthening was so close to our house we heard the crack of the lightening fractions of a scond before the thunder (that made the windows shake) and could smell the ozone in the air outside afterwards.
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David on 22/01/2012 6:03am
Just shows how variable this “Summer” has been, love it.
Cheers.
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JohnGaul on 22/01/2012 5:44am
Just had a weak thunderstorm move over from the south. Some hail from it and squally winds and the usual temperature drop. Most of the lightning in it was in the cloud.
JohnGaul
NZThS
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LM on 22/01/2012 4:32am
Seriously, it wasn’t that bad in Invers, the worst went through after midnight with a decent hail storm. There was a lot more sun than metservice predicted and I recorded a high of 15.6.
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kylie on 22/01/2012 11:05pm
in fact its odd not to have a dusting of snow on the mountains in jan if anythis this is late this year its usually around the first week of jan.
On another note will the dry continue in invercargill and te anau?
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