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Snow and wintry conditions have forced the cancellation of Queenstown Winter Festival events.
The MetService has warned of more heavy snow heading for Southland, with gale force winds and Civil Defence has urged farmers to get out their generators and start charging telecommunication batteries.
Organisers announced this afternoon
that the Lindauer Party in the Park - due to start at 6pm - had been cancelled due to safety concerns.
"This decision has been made due to heavy snowfalls, forecast cold temperatures and high winds," they said, urging people instead to "stay at home and keep safe and warm".
Queenstown has been all but cut off from the rest of the country today after most roads became impassable and the situation looks set to get worse as a second storm is now moving onto the country.
The Winter Festival's Creative Queenstown Arts and Crafts Market, Salvation Army National Youth Band and Bayleys Festival Parade have all been cancelled due to the icy weather.
The Bike Fix Ironhorse Mountain Bikes on Snow has been rescheduled to June 30 while a date for the Frisbee Golf Winter Wind-Up is yet to be arranged.
Queenstown's airport has reopened its main runway and is urging passengers to get in touch with their airlines after snow and ice caused cancellations earlier today.
Transit Otago and Southland regional manager Murray Clarke said Lindis Pass and the Haast Pass were both closed and only one road to Invercargill was open at the Kingston end of town.
Southland's Blackmount-Redcliff Road reopened this afternoon after council staff put grit down.
Auckland is being hit by the weather too with a house near Pukekohe losing its roof and an office down town being flooded.
Fire trucks have also been called out to a number of false alarms after a roll of thunder set off fire alarms earlier this morning.
Queenstown Airport said the decision to fly rested with the airlines now that its runway had reopened.
About 1000 Air New Zealand passengers had their travel plans disrupted and the airline this evening said customers would be rebooked on alternative flights once the weather had improved.
Qantas cancelled all of its four daily flights to the town and two Mount Cook flights were diverted to Invercargill.
Invercargill Airport operations manager Eric Forsyth says the runway is clear although there was snow at about 9am.
A mini tornado lifted an entire corrugated iron fence from a house in Glenalmond Crescent in the city earlier today.
It threw the fence on top of a parked car, smashing the window and penetrating the passenger seat. Another section of fence smashed a bedroom window of a nearby house.
Queenstown senior sergeant John Fookes said people have learnt their lesson from the shock of last night and their have been no accidents today.
"There are still cars in ditches where people have left them, waiting for the weather to improve," Mr Fookes said.
The local roads are slushy and icy and some of them can only be used by four wheeled drives, he said.
"It's still white as white out my window," Mr Fookes said.
Mr Clarke at Transit said: "Queenstown is not totally cut off but chains are essential and take it easy.
In the North Island, high winds are expected to be the main problem with severe gales forecast from Hawkes Bay to Wairarapa.
Aucklanders can expect showers - some heavy - and gale force westerly winds.
The bad weather will last for most of the weekend.
"You can't get into Central Otago or out of it. All the highways are affected," John Jarvis, Transit New Zealand's area engineer for the region said earlier this morning.
Mr Jarvis said the problem for travellers was compacted ice from yesterday's storm.
The storm yesterday left one person dead. Wanaka police said Veronica Lee May Tan, an international student from Malaysia studying at Otago University, died when the car she was a passenger slid off the Makarora-Lake Hawea Road on State Highway 6 and crashed into the lake.
Three other women survived and were taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia.
Transit New Zealand reported today that State Highway 80 to Mt Cook, State Highway 83 between Kurow and Omarama and State Highway 6 between Makarora and Haast were closed.
Caution was advised on State Highway 73 between Arthurs pass and Otira, and generally in the central South Island, Nelson and Otago.
Police advised motorists to watch following distances.
Severe weather forecaster Bob Lake said: "We have another front coming through approaching the far south this morning. That will bring a resurgence of cold south westerlies and some more snow down to fairly low levels, particularly in Fiordland, Southland and Otago."
Behind the front there are strong south westerlies, which will cause temperatures to plunge and bring as much as 20cm of snow at the 300m level with some falls below that.
Queenstown Lakes District Council emergency manager Brenden Winder said locals seemed to have handled the situation well but there will be one or two surprised tourists.
He said there were no phone calls overnight to the council's emergency line but he expected a few today.
Federated Farmers Otago president Richard Burdon said farmers are well prepared for the weather.
"There's been plenty of warning. We've had skiers down here, doing a snow dance, because they've been keen to get some snow," he said.
The power was lost last night but it was back on this morning.
The Central Otago skifields should pick up a reasonable amount of snow, Mr Lake said.
Dunedin is likely to get snow on its hill suburbs.
The cold air will travel north but the Canterbury region should be protected by the direction of the windflow.
Most of the activity will be offshore from Canterbury but there could be some snow falls in South Canterbury.
This polar blast was the sort of thing experienced from time to time in winter. The amounts of snow would not be huge but they would be significant.
"This is the third we have had in a series of cold southerly outbreaks," he said.
- with NZPA
