Monday Newsfeed: Unsettled all week + your Easter Weekend outlook
24/03/2024 8:44pm
A storm centred near Antarctica with very low air pressure (950hPa at times) will push gales and heavy rain into parts of New Zealand over the coming days, with a colder tail on Wednesday for some in the south. It could be described as an Autumn blast with wind being the main feature. Northern NZ will be least affected and southern and central parts of the country most exposed.
As for Monday, the centre of the large low pressure system will shift from being near Antarctica to closer to NZ – this will bring a burst of stronger gales into exposed and southern parts of the South Island with winds from the west to north west direction. Damaging gusts are possible. Heavy rain sets into the southern half of the West Coast.
Elsewhere winds pick up, especially around Wellington and Cook Strait and the lower North Island, but windier weather will spread up the country into Auckland and Coromandel Peninsula and BoP too. The North Island is mostly dry for Monday but a few showers will pepper the western coastal side.
Tuesday sees windy weather continue although should be less intense.
Wednesday has colder air around the South Island with snow on the ranges as the storm system moves away.
As for Easter Weekend – a spinoff low from the Southern Ocean storm may develop around northern NZ this weekend bringing wind and rain. It’s not 100% locked in as there’s a fair amount of chaos being caused by the low pressure coming in to NZ this week. We’ll have more details in our weather video out on Monday.
Additional Weather Maps you might find helpful are …
- Cumulative Rainfall next 7 days
- Max Temperatures
- Min Temperatures
- Various Wind Maps
- Official MetService Warnings & Watches
- Sign up for wind alerts from our new alerting app – and help get fewer nasty surprises.
WeatherWatch.co.nz / New Alerting App / RuralWeather.co.nz
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Kim on 25/03/2024 10:11am
I have a question unrelated to this particular forecast. Sometimes I have noticed there will be no wind/rain warning and then right at the last minute it will be upgraded by that other weather forecaster to either a watch/warning or a higher grade warning. My question is this: Have there ever been situations where you guys have felt that there was going to be severe enough wind or rain to warrant a watch or warning, when one has not been issued (by that other weather company)?
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WW Forecast Team on 25/03/2024 6:54pm
Hi there Kim, yes many times over the years. We won a contract with Vector in Auckland for forecasting the most damaging wind event in Auckland’s history while no official warnings were given. Again last year during the January 27 floods we were warning Auckland clients like Vector hours before the worst flooding occurred. And more recently this year we issued wind warnings on a day full of power cuts across Auckland when there was no official wind warning given. Our brand has grown from these gaps – and considering WeatherWatch is a very small private forecaster up against TWO Government forecasters who have all the technical infrastructure and collectively 200 million dollars a year in funding it shows how A) Our private data is excellent compared to Government forecasters that tax payers are forced to fund. 2) The Two Government funded commercial weather forecasters are broken.
Kind regards
Philip Duncan
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