The South was battered by strong winds bringing snow, sleet and hail from Tuesday. Snow in some areas fell well into last night.
Higher areas around Clinton were the worst affected, with drifts over 60cm on some highland farms, as snow blanketed Clinton hills.
Farmers around there and the Owaka Valley had stock on crops, or fed out baleage early yesterday.
In the Kuriwao Gorge, near Clinton, snow piled high beside the Clinton-Mataura Highway as graders and snow ploughs worked all afternoon to clear State Highway 93.
Snow was more than 20cm deep in most parts of Merrie Creek Farm in the gorge, with some waist-deep drifts.
From Tuesday evening, the wider Clinton area, Lawrence and Conical Hill had power cuts.
Ohai, Edendale, and Riverton in Southland faced interruptions to supplies.
About 1700 customers were affected by outages or interruptions and some homes were without power on Tuesday night.
Most customers had power restored by 9am yesterday, but 38 residents in the Slopedown area, near Clinton, had no power until lunchtime yesterday.
PowerNet, which runs the electricity networks in Clutha and Southland, lost power on Tuesday night after "snow loading" caused some power lines and poles to fall, network maintenance manager Ian Robertson said.
He said the power to the 38 homes near Clinton had been restored shortly before 11.30am yesterday, after they had been without power since just after 8.30pm on Tuesday night.
Snow and ice also closed some roads around rural Clutha. Roads in Slopedown and the Clinton side of the Owaka Valley, Hillend-Mt Stuart, Waipori, and Mahinerangi areas remained impassable overnight.
Clutha police reported no crashes yesterday, although two vehicles were stuck on State Highway 8 near the Manuka Gorge early yesterday.
Clutha Valley and Clinton primary schools were closed due to the weather yesterday, but the rest of the schools around the district had remained open.
In Southland, snow and hail continued to fall yesterday and residents prepared for gale-force winds overnight.
Wakatipu police have praised drivers, saying they reacted responsibly to the wintry road conditions yesterday and no major accidents had been reported since the arrival of snow on Tuesday night.
Black ice and snow closed the Milford-Te Anau highway and Outram-Middlemarch highway, while several other highways had ice and snow warnings. Vehicles taking the Crown Range route were required to have chains on.
Queenstown police were called to only one weather-related road accident, near Arthurs Point, but the driver had left the scene by the time they had arrived and no injuries were reported.
Arrowtown was again the hardest-hit in the basin. Snow was lying yesterday morning and another small fall settled just before 9am.
Four-wheel-drive vehicles or chains were required in the area.
All Wakatipu schools were kept open.
Lakes region weather forecaster David Crow said Queenstown would most likely have seen the end of snow for the week and with the temperature rise yesterday any expected snow showers would turn to rain by the time they reached ground level.
A high was expected to arrive by tomorrow and would remain until Sunday.
