KEY POINTS:
Just three weeks out from the opening of Mt Ruapehu's ski season, operators are looking at bare slopes.
Staff at the mountain are hoping for southerlies to bring cold weather to kick start a snow base.
By this time last year, snow had already closed the Desert Road on State Highway 1.
Alan Porteous, a climatologist with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said most parts of New Zealand have been more than a degree warmer than average this month.
He said if the warm weather continued, May would be on track to be the warmest in 20 years.
- NEWSTALK ZB
