Auckland shivers through coldest night this year under clear skies

Aucklanders froze through its coldest night this year on Wednesday night, with the nation’s biggest city recording the lowest temperature of any metropolitan centre.

The city’s inhabitants woke to frost on their windshields, with Auckland’s lowest temperature recorded at Whenuapai in the city’s north, where the mercury dropped to 1.1C at one point through the night.

The weather station at Auckland Airport hit 2.5C – cold, but not as cold as the coldest day in 1994 when the mercury dropped to -1.2C.

But Hamilton wasn’t far off – those in New Zealand’s fourth most populous city were treated to brisk 1.7C overnight.

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Christchurch and Wellington were positively tropical by comparison, checking in at 4.2C and 6.1C, respectively.

And there will be at least one more cold night on the way with a high pressure ridge in the Tasman pushing out cloud cover overnight on Thursday into Friday, said MetService meteorologist Clare O’Connor.

She said the clearer skies, coupled with the cold front that hit last night, would mean Thursday will be another chilly evening for those in the north.

“There won’t be an insulating layer of cloud, so it will be another cold night,” she said.

Temperature measurements taken over a 12-hour period from 9pm Wednesday to 9am the following morning also showed the Auckland Airport dropped to 2.5C.

But O’Connor said the cold front also meant relatively fine days across the country, with blue skies for most regions.

The strong and cold southwest flow that has swept across the country is forecast to ease on Thursday over mainland New Zealand and on Friday over the Chatham Islands.

But wind watches will stay place Wellington, Wairarapa and the Chatham Islands which could still face severe gales.

The worst of the wet weather on the horizon would hit the lower South Island late on Friday afternoon, with showers moving in.