UPDATED SATURDAY — A front is moving into New Zealand on New Year’s Eve bringing a cooler change in the south, wetter weather in the west and cloudy mild weather for many other areas.

The front will see areas of showers, drizzle and patchy rain moving around parts of the South Island and also some parts of the North Island – although high pressure holds on to some degree.

There may be a bit of cloud around the country due to both the South Island cold front and another system out in the Tasman Sea.

Most main centres look dry but with some chance of drizzle or a shower at some point but nothing significant for most (but check your local forecast for more details as we;re being quite general here).

Temperature-wise many in the north and east look mild but a cooler change will be moving up the South Island. 

Don’t forget WeatherWatch.co.nz has over 1500 forecast locations with the chance of rain in % form included for each town, suburb and most beaches and rural Kiwi Communities. If you use our website you can break those forecasts down to hourly (and we’ll be bringing this extra service to our app in the new year too).

Forecast Rain Radar for 10pm New Year’s Eve shows some light patchy rain or drizzle here and there but generally speaking many main centres look dry or mostly dry – but many areas may be cloudy with humidity. There may be some heavy downpours on the West Coast.

Forecast Temperature Map for early evening on December 31st shows the cold front lying somewhere around Canterbury with warmer weather to the north and cooler conditions moving in further south. 

Wind map for New Year’s Eve shows a lot of calm weather but a cooler southerly may be blowing past Dunedin and hugging the east coast, while a brisk nor’west breeze blows through Cook Strait area. A light northerly quarter flow is continuing around northern NZ.

– Maps by Weathermap.co.nz

– WeatherWatch.co.nz