North west, south west, north west, south west – this is the pattern Spring often brings us and it brings wild swinging temperatures and days of little wind to days of gales.

The past few days saw gusts as strong as 190km/h recorded in the mountains and up to 150km/h at sea level – but today is looking much calmer as a significant amount of air pressure moves on to New Zealand.

An area of high air pressure roughly twice as wide as Australia stretches from Aussie’s west coast to just slightly east of the Chatham Islands. While that sounds impressive it isn’t expected to last long. Head weather analyst Philip Duncan says Thursday should see a much settled day but Friday the winds return to the south. “A very deep low that is similar in size and depth to Hurricane Ike is churning well south of New Zealand in the Southern Ocean – this is typical for September and coupled with another much smaller low near the South Island it will bring more strong to gale force nor’westers to southern regions”.

Duncan says Friday to Sunday should be windy with rain showers spreading northwards, reaching as far north as Auckland overnight Saturday or Sunday morning.  “Auckland and other northern centres should have a relatively settled Friday too”.

“The weekend isn’t looking as flash as last weekend with showers and winds for many – but temperatures in eastern areas could well reach into the mid 20s again”.

Mr Duncan says the windy conditions this week are mostly likely to the be ‘entree’ to October’s menu of stormy weather.