In Clydebank, near Glasgow, Scotland, it got as warm as 4degC yesterday, and the temperature is expected to drop to a high of just 3degC today.
Tomorrow, rain is forecast - it may be slightly bleak.
So it is not surprising Scottish immigrant Lynn McFeeters was enjoying her first Christmas in Dunedin, popping champagne at St Kilda beach in the sun, where the temperature was close to 20degC.
The reason Ms McFeeters has moved to the city from Clydebank, a town on the River Clyde with a history of ship building and sewing machine manufacture, was down, in part, to Central Otago.
''I wanted to be near my family,'' she said.
Her family is sister Joyce Stewart, who has lived in New Zealand for the past eight years.
She came for a holiday to Central Otago, which she ''really liked'', and settled in Dunedin.
Ms McFeeters, who is working in Dunedin as a social worker, was after ''a big change'', and moved here in June.
She said the long summer evenings at Christmas were ''strange'', but the good weather had kept any homesickness at bay.
In the waves at St Kilda, Ali Hanraads was also enjoying her first summer Christmas.
The ambulance officer from the south of England was in the city on holiday, after looking on a map and making a spur-of-the-moment decision.
And the water temperature?''Actually, it's really warm.''
