PUKETE PAK'NSAVE STRIPPED OF BREAD AND MILK BY 8AM OVER FORECAST 'LIGHT FROST'

A single overnight frost warning for the Waikato has emptied the bread aisle at the Pukete Pak'nSave, with staff describing the 7am rush as "worse than the Sunday before Christmas".

The forecast low was minus one. The panic began Tuesday afternoon, when a Hamilton East woman posted the MetService app to a local Facebook group with the caption "here we go again". By 8am Wednesday the shelves were bare. Someone was seen loading eight loaves of Vogel's into a Suzuki Swift.

Shopper Deborah Kerei, 58, of Pukete, said she'd only come in for cat biscuits. She left with four litres of blue top and a sourdough she didn't want. "Everyone else was grabbing things so I grabbed things. Mum did the same in '96. We ate toast for a fortnight."

A store spokesperson confirmed bread deliveries were "on schedule" and there was no supply issue. "It's a frost. The trucks come from Te Rapa. People are just like this."

By lunchtime it was fourteen degrees and drizzling over the river. The bread aisle was still empty. A staffer restocking milk was heard muttering something about Cambridge.

The frost is now forecast to miss Hamilton entirely and settle over Matamata.