An enormous anticyclone (stretching over 4000km wide – the size of Australia) is moving over Australia in the coming days and it’s bringing a big cool down for them and will then likely affect New Zealand.

The high has central air pressure into the 1030s (hPa) and is encouraging a colder southerly in the days ahead for south eastern Australia, mainly SA, VIC and TAS, while clear skies and light winds bring colder days inland.

However as this high moves closer to New Zealand by the start of next week it will become less tall (from north to south) but still wide though (from west to east). This means it’s not as protective when it reaches the NZ area. It will also likely be pushed north of NZ as next week goes on, allowing windier, wetter, weather to move in to the west…once again. 

Early next week New Zealand gets a brief dump of snow on the ranges and mountains, then the week ahead is a mixture of warmer west to north west winds and cooler west to south west winds as the high moves into northern areas and then gets pushed north of the country allowing a more typical Autumn set up to move in.

This set up next week encourages more wet weather on the West Coast and more dry weather for many northern and eastern areas. Next week will be cooler than this week for a number of areas although some regions in the east, like Hawke’s Bay, will benefit from the westerly flow will more mild days.

ABOVE – Noon Saturday over Australia
BELOW – Noon next Wednesday over NZ

– WeatherWatch.co.nz