A storm is deepening offshore north-east of the North Island today as weak high pressure tracks over the South Island.

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Let’s get into the forecast for Wednesday to start with…

RAIN:
Rain and showers brush the eastern North Island thanks to that offshore low, mostly from East Cape to Hawke’s Bay. Dry or mainly dry elsewhere.

WIND:
South to south-east winds may be brisk in exposed parts of the very eastern North Island, mainly around East Cape, Hawke’s Bay and maybe Manawatu.

TEMPERATURES:
It’s a little cooler for some today still but no major swings in temperatures expected.

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DAYS AHEAD + CHRISTMAS DAY
On Thursday there isn’t a great deal of change for the North Island with eastern rain or showers from East Cape to Wairarapa and those windy easterly quarter winds pushing into eastern areas from East Cape all the way down to coastal Otago and the Catlins. The South Island has east to north-east winds – again mainly along that eastern side – and that might see a few eastern showers into places like Canterbury, but won’t likely be much.

By Friday a new area of low pressure lies over NZ, centred mostly over the Tasman Sea – the storm north-east of NZ is gone and absorbed into this new larger but weaker low. Despite this new large low forming late week and over the weekend – it doesn’t appear too severe.

The weekend will have unsettled weather moving in from the west with more rain, showers and even some thunderstorms. Low pressure centres can have calm and sunny weather at times – but the low air pressure can also suddenly create downpours and thunderstorms. Keep up to date with our forecasts, they update hourly and that is especially helpful on the day.

As for Christmas Day next week – we’re still seeing high pressure over the NZ area but low pressure is all around us. We’ll be locking in our Christmas Day forecast this Thursday at WeatherWatchTV on YouTube.

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REDUCED SUMMER SCHEDULE
Starting from this weekend we have a reduced news and video schedule over the next month with lighter daily news updates and fewer weather video updates (last year we had no video updates so the reduction is an improvement over last year!). Should any major weather event hit we’ll activate our full team. Our forecasts continue to update each and every hour.

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PROGRAMMING NOTE:
We have no weather video today – we’re back again tomorrow/Thursday.

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