A large storm in the Southern Ocean is currently doing two things – it’s helping to boost temperatures across New Zealand while it’s pulling temperatures down in Australia.

The placement of the deep low means it’s basically in between the two nations with a cold southerly spreading across more of Australia whilst bringing warmer than average northerlies into New Zealand.

“It’s not often at all that we see such a large portion of Australia more than 8 degrees colder than average and then at the same time parts of New Zealand are more than 8 degrees warmer than average” says WeatherWatch.co.nz head forecaster Philip Duncan. “Australia has snow on the ranges in the south while as Zealanders are switching on the air-con and fans”.

Despite the dramatic swings away from what is normally recorded at this time of year, the temperatures themselves aren’t too extreme. “This is classic mid-spring weather but generally speaking there will be a lot of NZers talking about how warm it is right now while many Australia’s will be saying the opposite”.

Cooler air reaches NZ later this week – but mostly only the lower half of the South Island. Dunedin’s high on Thursday is only 14C and may be as low as 12C this weekend as high pressure moves in with that southerly flow preceding it.

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DEPARTURE FROM NORMAL MAPS

These maps below show Maximum Temperatures (these are the numbers you see on the actual maps) and then the coloured shading highlights how much warmer or colder than normal that is (displayed in the Key on the left). What is “normal”? Temperatures that have been recorded at these locations as Maximum Temperatures on these dates over the past few decades.

• WeatherWatch.co.nz