A sub-tropical low looks set to bring a windy, wet, few days to northern parts of New Zealand arriving in Northland on Saturday and reaching Hawkes Bay early next week.

The low was predicted earlier this week by computer models used by the Weather Watch Centre and in the past 48 hours the models have shown a dramatic deepening and a change to it’s path – taking the storm’s strongest winds right over northern New Zealand.

MetService has now issued severe weather warnings for northern New Zealand predicting heavy rain and winds up to 140km/h.

WeatherWatch.co.nz head weather analyst Philip Duncan says earlier in the week the low looked as though it would travel well east of New Zealand but recent data updates show it will now slide near Northland and East Cape.  “It has the potential to be a nasty system with damage quite likely in places like Northland, eastern Waikato and East Cape”.

See all the warnings here.

Mr Duncan says the strongest winds will arrive on Sunday morning for most places.  “The winds will be from the east then the south east, driving heavy rain into places that face those directions.  If there are hills to the west that will increase rainfall amounts as the rain clouds build up on the eastern side”.

In MetService’s severe weather outlook on Thursday afternoon they predicted a “high chance” of heavy rain and severe gales across Northland this Saturday and Sunday and for Sunday and Monday across eastern parts of East Cape including Gisborne – a region hit by flooding just last week.  They have “moderate confidence” of heavy rain and severe gales for Auckland, Coromandel Peninsula and Tauranga this weekend and a “moderate” chance of heavy rain for Hawkes Bay on Sunday and Monday.