A large area of low pressure will move into the North Island this weekend and deepen a bit further before weakening slowly over Monday and Tuesday. The result will be localised areas of heavy rain and some gusty winds – but most will have fairly standard unsettled weather.

The main areas of concern are hit and miss, in pockets, around the North Island, mostly northern and eastern areas which could see sub-tropical fuelled downpours. Some may even be torrential for a time in the north east of the North Island – but even within regions it will be hit and miss with half of a region potentially getting heavy rain while the other half may only have drizzle or even dry spells and sun.

The low itself isn’t very aggressive but is squashing up against high pressure. There is a chance winds may reach gale force for a time in the Auckland region on Saturday. Vector and WeatherWatch.co.nz have been in close talks for the past two days with our advice being after the storm two and a half weeks ago even fairly low end gusty winds from the opposing direction could cause further complications on Saturday. “The storm a few Tuesdays ago in Auckland blew in from the west to south west. The gusty winds on Saturday will be coming in from the opposite direction and this may loosen or break already damaged branches and trees” says head forecaster Philip Duncan. “This could lead to a couple of isolated power cuts on Saturday, otherwise for the most part these winds very much look below the damaging and power cut threshold and certainly much, much, lighter than the winds a couple weeks ago”.

It’s not just the north in for wind and rain. Strong winds and maybe gales could impact the Southern Alps, heavy rain through inland northern Canterbury and finally a southerly change is also heading up the South Island and will likely bring a brief Saturday morning dusting of snow down to 500m around Southland and Otago, 700m in South Canterbury and 900m in Mid Canterbury. Standard Autumn weather.

“We have another big high rolling in by mid next week and it may be the last one for a while so our advice is make the most of the settled weather moving in next week as it may be gone as soon as next weekend” says Mr Duncan.

– WeatherWatch.co.nz – Proud to be an official IBM business partner