WILD NIGHT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 July 1939, Page 6

WILD NIGHT

! BANKS PENINSULA CLOTHED IN SNOW TWO FEET THICK ON MAIN HIGHWAY. TRANSPORT DISORGANISED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. Heavy snowfalls on the coastal areas of the province followed upon a howling south-west gale which sprang up early yesterday afternoon and continued throughout the night and this morning. Banks Peninsula had one of the wildest nights on record. On the more exposed places up to fourteen feet of snow lay in drifts this morning and two feet of snow covered parts of the main highway and transport services to Akaroa and the bays were disorganised. Party line telephone wires were down and heavy stock losses were reported by the few cars which managed to get into Akaroa. Inland areas and North Canterbury did not experience such extreme conditions. There were light snowfalls along the foothills.

BUS ABANDONED

BLIZZARD RAGING ON HILLTOP.

COUNTY GRADER SNOWED IN.

CHRISTCHURCH, This Day.

With a blizzard raging at the hilltop when the mail bus from Akaroa arrived there nearly two hours late this morning, it was reported from Little River that the trip would not be completed and the bus was left there till the storm abated and the road cleared. No passengers were on the bus. In no time, the parked vehicle, acting as a windbreak, was hidden from the hotel by a great heap of snow, which piled up on the leeward side. The Wairewa County Council’s grader, sent from Little River earlier Ihis morning, had not been heard from at 12.30 p.m. today and was reported to be blocked and snowed in. Four feet of snow lay on the Little River side of the highway. The Union Airways service was also disrupted by the storm. The northbound aeroplane did not leave Dunedin this morning and thp south-bound machine was delayed on its run to Christchurch but was only slightly behind schedule.