New Zealand has had two southerly blasts in 10 days and both only briefly brought in temperatures below normal. There’s a lack of frost and now both Monday and Tuesday are kicking off warmer than average nationwide.

High pressure just north of New Zealand is to blame, it’s pulling in a light westerly flow out of Australia and across NZ. Hardly wintry.

So far most of our weather this year has be influenced and dominated by very large highs coming out of Australia and pulling warmer air NZ’s way. We’re often asked if the lack of frosts and cold blasts this year, or the warmer than average trend, is climate change.

Climate change is measured in trends over decades and we can see that local weather patterns (just the placement of the highs and lows) are causing the warmer trends in the New Zealand area at the moment – but, when you look back at previous winters and autumns we do now have had a pattern of warmer than normal winters for the better part of this decade.

Also, at this stage there are no significant nationwide cold outbreaks forecast between now and the shortest day of the year, June 22 but we do expect more alpine snow and perhaps a few light frosts here and there in sheltered places.

– WeatherWatch.co.nz