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Anthony Sharwood, 20 May 2022, 2:07 AM UTC

NZ slammed by bitter winds, low level snow

NZ slammed by bitter winds, low level snow

The cold weather system which delivered snow to Tasmania and alpine areas of mainland Australia has migrated across the Tasman Sea and is now unleashing its full fury upon New Zealand.

Southern Ocean frontal systems don't often deliver snow to both countries. When they do – as this one has to an extent – the impact tends to be much stronger in either NZ or Australia, and this is very much a New Zealand system which pretty much just paid Australia a brief courtesy visit on the way over.

As you can see from the cold speckled air field on Friday morning's satellite image (and we wrote recently about speckled cloud in this story), an airmass with polar origins is now affecting more or less the whole of New Zealand.

Numerous road snow warnings are in effect across the South Island, where snow is falling as low as 500 metres above sea level. That means it's almost down to lake level (approx 300 metres) in Queenstown, the iconic resort town which normally sits well below the snowline even in midwinter.

As you'd expect, the South Island ski resorts have seen plenty of late autumn snow from this system.

Image: The Saddle Chair at Treble Cone skifield during a brief sunny break in the May 20 blizzard. Source: Treble Cone.com.

In addition to snow and cold temperatures, winds are strong across the entire country with multiple warnings in place.

Because of the Covid Pandemic, this will be the first winter since 2019 that Australians are free to visit New Zealand in winter, after borders reopened to tourists on April 13.

According to the NZ government, around 160,000 Australians visited the country in the 2019 winter, spending more than $211 million which accounted for around 40 percent of all spending by international tourists.

Our business is important to them, and NZ is an equally important alternative southern hemisphere winter destination for Aussie snow lovers, many of whom plan quick trans-Tasman getaways when conditions are better over there.

This week's snow isn't yet deep enough to create a meaningful base for the start of the NZ ski season in June, but it's the sort of weather system which will get many Australians thinking about the Kiwi snow for the first time in three seasons.

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