“My fingers are freezing!” is being heard a lot at the moment across the country – and while southerners have brutal icy overnight lows it’s the wet and damp daytime highs that are making for cold conditions in the north.

Anyone who has lived in both Central Otago and Auckland and northwards can tell you the remarkable difference between ‘feels like’ temperatures even when Auckland appears much warmer on paper.  

The high humidity in Auckland, Hamilton and Whangarei all year round makes summers more muggy but means winters are far more damp.

The damp air means those in the north may be really struggling to ‘warm up’ today (just like yesterday) even with heaters going. A bit like how in February on a really hot and humid day the air con is only useful when you’re near it.

This year northerners have basically “skipped winter weather” – that was until recent days when icy weather spread as far north as Northland.  Today a small low in the north is feeding more of that cold air back in from the east.

For some in the north, like Auckland, today may well feel like one of the coldest days of 2016 thanks to the lack of sun and the cold, wet, easterly.

Warmer weather returns to the upper North Island on Friday when places like Auckland surge up to 16 degrees following a high today of only 11 or 12 and a feels like high of maybe only 8 or 9 degrees in the wind.

– Image / Infrared satellite map for Weds AM shows the heavy, gloomy, clouds over northern NZ / MTSAT

– WeatherWatch.co.nz