A truly massive belt of high pressure will this week influence New Zealand’s weather starting today and not leaving until next Tuesday (8 days from now). It is by far the largest high pressure system in our part of the world so far this year.

By Tuesday the high will cover a distance roughly 9000km from west to east (Australia is 4000kms wide) and will take over a week to travel past us. Across New Zealand this means cloudy areas in the west at times, it means light winds in both islands generally speaking and it also means a mainly dry week ahead – in fact drier than average for this time of the year.

While overnight lows are cooler with the light winds the daytime highs continue to be either mostly above average or around average all this week. 

Late week we may see a few showers in both islands with a very localised southerly but this enormous belt of high pressure will dominate for over a week, including this coming weekend when it will also help bring in a milder sub-tropical northerly flow.

RAINMAKERS:
The next two dates for potential rainmakers come next Tuesday May 28th from a sub-tropical flow on the back end of this large departing high, Tten around May 31st there may be a Tasman Sea low with rain for both islands too. 

WeatherWatch.co.nz says May will end on a drier than average and milder than average note for a number of regions across New Zealand due to the uptick in large influencing high pressure systems coming out of Australia.

– Set up for Tuesday May 21st

– WeatherWatch.co.nz