Icy blast brings minus 6 frost at Mount Cook, snow warnings and fresh Mount Maunganui slips

An icy southwesterly has swept the length of New Zealand this weekend, dropping the mercury to well below freezing in the south, dusting alpine passes with snow, and forcing a fresh round of road closures as the cold air met sodden ground in the north.

MetService recorded the country’s lowest temperature at Aoraki Mount Cook, where the mercury fell to minus 6.3C on Sunday morning. The alpine village was tipped to be one of the coldest inhabited spots in the nation over the weekend, with forecasters picking a daytime high of just 3C and an overnight low near minus 11C. Queenstown was forecast to reach about 5C before dropping to minus 5C overnight, with severe frosts expected across inland Otago and Southland.

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The cold snap was driven by a broad southwesterly flow that pushed polar air up over the country behind a front, a classic mid-winter set-up that brings clear, bitterly cold nights inland and unsettled, showery weather in the west. MetService said snow was possible down to around 200 metres at times about Fiordland, Southland and Otago, while the North Island copped showers that were heavy in places in the west before clearing later in the day, as reported by RNZ.

The snow put a string of South Island highways on notice. Road snowfall warnings covered the alpine passes, with Lewis Pass on State Highway 7 flagged for snow lowering to about 600 metres and 1cm to 3cm possible on the road, and Porters Pass on State Highway 73 warned for 3cm to 5cm above 600 metres with lighter falls down to 400 metres. On the central plateau, the Desert Road stretch of State Highway 1 was also covered by warnings. Waka Kotahi NZTA kept area warnings in place for several inland routes including State Highway 8 between Tarras and Omarama over the Lindis Pass, along with State Highways 85 and 87, and urged drivers to take extra care where snow and ice were forming.

Waka Kotahi said snow and cold temperatures could cause ice to form on roads and make driving dangerous, and asked people to slow down, increase their following distance and carry chains if they were heading into the high country. By Saturday afternoon MetService had lifted most of its South Island warnings as the front moved through, with the last snowfall warning, for Lewis Pass, due to expire, according to a Waka Kotahi traffic bulletin, though the agency warned ice and cold would linger on shaded inland roads.

While the south shivered, the top of the country dealt with wind and water. Wellington was hit by heavy, monsoon-like downpours late in the week that flooded streets and prompted questions about how the capital’s drains coped, and Auckland braced for strong gales that raised the prospect of the Harbour Bridge being restricted to high-sided vehicles at times. Forecasters warned of further downpours for the lower North Island as the system tracked north, as covered by 1News.

The most visible impact in the north came at Mount Maunganui, where fresh slips on the flanks of Mauao brought down earth and forced another road closure. Tauranga City Council shut Adams Avenue to vehicles between Pilot Bay and the Maunganui Road roundabout after material came down on Friday night, calling the closure a precautionary step while the ground remained at higher risk of further movement. The council said the closure was expected to stay in place until at least Monday while geotechnical teams assessed the slope.

The latest movement was in the same area that has slipped repeatedly in recent months, and it sits close to the base of the mountain near the Mount Maunganui Holiday Park. That location carries a heavy recent history, with a fatal landslide earlier in 2026 having killed six people at the campground, and the council has taken a cautious line on any renewed instability ever since. Coverage of the fresh closure was reported by RNZ and Stuff.

The pattern behind the weekend is a familiar one for a New Zealand winter. A deep southwesterly wraps cold air around the country, funnelling moisture and snow onto the Southern Alps and inland basins while the same flow throws showers and gales at the exposed west and north. What makes each event different is the ground it lands on. After a wet run of weeks in the upper North Island, hillsides around the Bay of Plenty are already saturated, so even ordinary winter rain can be enough to set a slope moving.

For most people the practical effects were the everyday business of a cold front. Frost-bitten mornings meant scraping windscreens and slow starts on rural roads, ski fields welcomed the fresh cover, and travellers over the alpine passes faced delays and the need for chains. Anyone driving inland in the south over the coming mornings has been urged to treat black ice as a real hazard, particularly in shaded cuttings and on bridges where the cold sits longest.

MetService expected the frosts to ease as cloud and milder air returned early in the week, taking the sharpest edge off the cold. Even so, forecasters cautioned that another push of cold southerlies is never far away at this time of year, and that the combination of saturated ground in the north and hard frosts in the south is one to keep watching.

Did the cold snap reach your part of the country, and how did your roads and mornings hold up? Share what you saw in the comments below.

This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂