The North Island and some remaining parts of the South Island have further hot weather today – but a refreshing to cold nationwide change is coming.

Yesterday WeatherWatch.co.nz confirmed a high of 40 degrees recorded inland near Gisborne and this morning IBM again confirmed this very high temperature occured yesterday at Te Karaka.

But while the heat for Tuesday afternoon will again be in the low to mid 30s we’re not expecting the 40 degree mark to be challenged. 

There may be some places that still make it into the mid 30s in the North Island’s east today but they will likely be more isolated today.

Just had further confirmation of the 40 degree temperature reached inland west of #Gisborne yesterday.

This data map from @ibmnz shows Monday’s daytime highs in all our valleys & main centres – the small pink dot at Te Karaka near Gisborne represents 40C!#Weather #NewZealand pic.twitter.com/VWcTz4aayI

— WeatherWatch.co.nz (@WeatherWatchNZ) February 3, 2020

The cooler change arriving Tuesday in the South Island and overnight and into Wednesday for the North Island will drop humidity levels and in some regions it will cut back daytime highs by over 10 degrees.

The new Southern Ocean airflow will push temperatures below average both by day and by night across parts of NZ for the days and nights ahead. In fact Queenstown on Thursday night has a low of just 4 degrees and Lumsden in Northern Southland drops to just 3 – almost frost territory. 

There are plenty of nights ahead across Otago, Southland and even into Canterbury.

But in the North Island the air won’t be quite so cold – but Wellington has a windy, cooler run of weather coming. The positive is that it will be mostly dry. Not so positive for North Island farmers who, despite the slight cool down, still won’t be seeing much rain. 

Humidity in Auckland will also ease.

– WeatherWatch.co.nz