Summer continues to back-fire as more cloud, wind and low temperatures affect a number of regions yet again – but WeatherWatch.co.nz says there’s still enough time for things to warm up further…but only just.

As the first national long weekend of the year gets underway WeatherWatch.co.nz continues to buck the trend of other forecasters saying that cloud will blanket many regions and windy weather will continue off and on too.

“We do expect some sunny weather but the majority of regions will have cloud and many North Island regions will deal with breezy to brisk easterlies and even some drizzle” says Head Weather Analyst Philip Duncan.

But Mr Duncan says our weather could be a lot worse.  “We have tropical storms to our north, Southern Ocean storms to our south and another low to our east – we also have a stream of cloud pouring in from Australia from across the Tasman.  The most settled weather in the south Pacific is actually currently over New Zealand and just to our south east”.

The easterly wind flow means places like Timaru, Christchurch, Masterton, Napier, Hastings and Gisborne – centres which are normally in the late 20s or low to mid 30s by now – will struggle to even climb into the 20s, with highs predicted this weekend of 17 to 22 degrees.

But easterlies favour hotter, brighter, weather for western areas, which may develop as the weekend goes on.

“We have a high that is just, and I mean ‘just’ holding on to New Zealand – it’s enough to hold back the tropical lows but the pressure gradient means easterlies will be brisk at times this weekend, especially on the edge of the high which is mainly over the North Island”.

Mr Duncan says drizzle will mostly affect eastern parts of the North Island but wind flow is everything.  “The huge difficulty in making accurate weather predictions under conditions like this is figuring out the exact wind direction.  Last weekend all forecasters missed perfectly predicting Auckland’s weather simply because the wind direction shifted slightly more south west – dragging in plenty of cloud instead of clear skies with a southerly.  This weekend, with so much cloud around, a slight change in wind could be the difference between cloudy and gloomy or fairly sunny”.

But the overall prediction remains the same – a lot of cloud around the nation.

February is traditionally the hottest time of the year for most parts of the country but the first half of this month doesn’t look especially sunny and hot, even if conditions do feel muggier in the north.

The tropics are continuing to fire up with more high risk for flooding in the tropical islands this weekend.  “We’re seeing a number of lows merging together, to roughly cover the size of Australia’s interior, directly north of New Zealand.  It is impressively large for that part of the globe.  New Zealand is mostly protected from it but the islands to our north will be in for more wind, rain and thunderstorms this weekend and next week”.

And Australia isn’t doing much better.

WeatherWatch.co.nz says the south is about to be hammered by a large storm while northern Australia is dealing with La Nina easterlies and plenty of rain and humidity.

Meanwhile Perth and other parts of western Australia are again dealing with rain.  The normally very dry region is being hit by the remnants of Cyclone Iggy – which yesterday was still a category 2 tropical cyclone, but is now technically an ex-cyclone.

WeatherWatch.co.nz says the transition into Autumn this year for New Zealand may be fairly unnoticeable with Autumn like temperatures already affecting many parts of New Zealand. 

“Think of the seasons as the speed zones on our highways – summer is the 100 zone and Autumn the 70…so far we’ve been travelling at 70km/h for most of this summer so the transition into the Autumn  70km zone will make no difference, we just keep on going as we’ve been going” says Mr Duncan.

In other words, no dramatic cooling is expected when Summer officially ends in 4 weeks and similar temperatures may continue on into April.  If sky conditions clear further it could mean a very pleasant Autumn for many – but at this stage WeatherWatch.co.nz isn’t prepared to make an Autumn prediction, saying the weather is simply too chaotic to predict beyond a few weeks at the moment.

– Homepage image / Dylan Ray

– WeatherWatch.co.nz