NORTH DUNEDIN BRACES FOR SNOW THAT HAS NEVER, IN RECORDED HISTORY, ACTUALLY ARRIVED

It was a Tuesday morning in North Dunedin. The sky was grey. The wind smelled like damp carpet. MetService had used the word 'flurries'. Nothing about that day suggested what was about to happen. Nothing did. That did not stop the suspect — the entire student quarter — from acting like the Alps were closing in.

By 9am the New World on Gardens Corner had run out of bread. Also mince. Also, for reasons no-one could explain, tortillas. A queue of scarfies in Crocs stretched to the carpark. One flat on Dundas Street dragged a two-bar heater out of the hall cupboard 'in case'. The heater had no cord.

Resident Moira Fenwick, 71, watched from her Clyde Street window. She remembers 1974. "They said snow then too," she told The Daily Yarn. "Didn't come. Hasn't come since. The pier at St Clair had more snow on it in '74 than North D's ever seen. And that was mostly seagull business."

A Dunedin City Council spokesperson confirmed the grit truck was dispatched 'as a precaution'. Council records show no settled snow in the suburb since 1946. Asked why the truck went out, the spokesperson said: "The lads were keen for a drive." The University emailed students to say lectures were still on. It was ignored on unrelated grounds.

By 3pm it was nine degrees and drizzling. A first-year in a ski jacket and shorts told a flatmate: "Bugger. Bought the mince for nothing."

No snow has fallen. The grit truck is still out. And somewhere on Dundas Street, a couch is being carried onto a front lawn — for reasons nobody is yet willing to explain.