Whiteout hits Bay

STAFF REPORTERS
Hawke's Bay woke to a whiteout this morning as Jack Frost trampled heavily on the region in the wee hours.
Winter officially began on June 1 and with the milestone reached the intensity of the cold starts seems to have increased.
A thick layer of ice blanketed much of the Bay, painting lawns white and encrusting cars in ice.
There were reports of ice making the Napier-Taupo Rd treacherous, and it was labelled as a factor in a crash in which a van rolled near Te Haroto on the Napier-Taupo road yesterday afternoon.
But neither Napier police nor the New Zealand Transport Agency had driver warnings in place for it or any other Hawke's Bay roads.
Police understood there was only one person in the vehicle, and she suffered only minor injury.
The Metservice put the 8am Hastings temperature today at a frigid -2C - by which stage it had gone up a degree from the overnight low of -3C. Napier recorded -1C.
It usually gets colder in other parts of the region and Bridge Pa Vineyard manager Peter Hurley said the thermometer hit -5.2C there this morning, leaving behind a "cracker frost".
"It's very white out here," he said.
In a case of good timing, there was good news yesterday for customers of electricity company Contact Energy, which has promised to freeze prices for Hawke's Bay and East Coast customers until the end of next winter.
It is confident of attracting new customers, and regaining market floaters.
The deal, also applying to Christchurch and Wellington, comes in volatile times and company spokesman Jonathan Hill, of Wellington, said: "The retail electricity market is incredibly competitive."
The company promised that people who signed up to special Contact deals last year, countering offers from opposition, would automatically shift to the frozen tariffs once their agreements lapsed.
It said it would absorb increases in charges from national-grid operator Transpower or lines companies during the period of 16 months.
While not wanting to endorse any particular commercial offer, Minister of Energy Gerry Brownlee has said it will set a pace for other companies to follow, and that it would have been "audacious" for companies to be raising prices in the wake of the Commerce Commission's recent decision that electricity companies' overcharging had provided benefits of up to $4.3 billion.
Mr Hill said Contact's "large" market share in the Hawke's Bay and East Coast region was among the reasons for the promise being made to customers in the area, but said the company had in place a long-standing policy of introducing offers on a region-by-region basis.