Rain and showers, sometimes heavy, continue to fall across many parts of New Zealand tonight bringing huge relief to farmers and gardeners across the nation after a very dry end to spring.

WeatherWatch.co.nz has for weeks been receiving emails from concerned farmers nationwide as rain numbers tumble and many regions dry out – before summer had even started.  

However the rain at the moment is doing a great job at reversing this trend across a number of areas, especially the north and east of NZ which has seen less rain than this time last year.

On Friday a southerly will turn the rain to showers but while that process is happening the wet weather will push into Otago and Canterbury, two other very dry regions.

However as WeatherWatch.co.nz has been warning all week, those who rely on rain water may need to take note of the incoming dry weather.

A number of reliable models are picking a series of high pressure bubbles to cross central New Zealand – bringing settled, dry, sunny weather to the middle of the country and dry but cloudy at times weather for the upper north and lower south.

One model yesterday was picking a potential sub-tropical low at the end of next week, however the high looks powerful enough to stop it from heading south towards us.

The dry weather may last up to two weeks for some areas – but the luck of the dry may run out just in time for Christmas.  We will confirm a Christmas Day forecast next week.

In the meantime we have a south west change spreading across New Zealand on Friday and Saturday which will kill off the humidity currently impacting northern NZ. 

By Sunday we expect mostly settled and dry weather across New Zealand with warm days and cooler nights returning.

– WeatherWatch.co.nz