By Philip Duncan

One area of high pressure in the Tasman Sea is ruining summer holidays for people in both New Zealand and Australia at the moment.

Eastern Australia has certainly had some hot, dry, weather this summer but they’ve also had their fair share of heavy rain. Rain warnings have been issued and floods have occurred.

A large high in the Tasman Sea is feeding the wet weather down from the sub-tropics to Australia. This is the same wind flow that runs anti-clockwise around this high and then turning around and feeding sou’westers across much of New Zealand.

More rain warnings have been issued for the South Island’s West Coast for Wednesday and Thursday. I haven’t spoken to anyone at MetService but I’m sure they’re wanting a quiet spell as they have certainly been issuing dozens of severe weather warnings over the past few weeks. It’s a bit unfair really, when you consider this should be a time when they can perhaps have some ‘easy’ weather to forecast while much of the nation is at the beach or enjoying sleep-ins.

To see what may be happening next week and for the rest of this blog, click here