A week of even windier weather has already begun for some areas across the country and later today it will ramp up across the upper Norh Island especially.

FRIDAY
Winds across Friday PM will build and tonight gales, potentially with isolated pockets of damaging gusts, will affect regions most exposed to north to north west winds.

Winds tonight will spread to most North Island areas..

However while the windy weather moves into the North Island today, the South Island returns – briefly – to calm.

SATURDAY
Saturday looks blustery over much of the North Island, especially northern and eastern areas along with the South Island’s West Coast and inland parts of the Southern Alps. Gales are again expected in Auckland.

SUNDAY
Sunday sees winds easing for most North Island areas – some might have a wind blowing all day but generally speaking conditions do ease for most North Island places on Sunday.

But in the Deep South strong to gale force winds will start to build – then about the Southern Alps may reach hurricane force later in the day – and this may spread east.  One to watch.

MONDAY – Stormiest day
While gale force winds will pop up within the next 24 hours in some areas it’s Monday that we believe a spring storm will move in with damaging winds quite possible.  Both WeatherWatch.co.nz and government forecaster MetService have confidence of severe gales about the South Island and central New Zealand on Monday. 

WeatherWatch.co.nz believes some inland areas of Canterbury and amongst the Southern Alps could see damaging hurricane force winds sustained at over 130km/h.

In fact on Monday PM it’s possible Wellington and exposed parts of Central New Zealand could be exposed to damaging winds above 140km/h.  “Our computer models and clearly the models used by the government forecaster are all indicating Monday could be a fairly stormy day for parts of New Zealand” says head weather analyst Philip Duncan.  “This is one farmers, authotiries, airlines, airports and travellers should be aware of”.

Mr Duncan says it’s still too early to “lock in” the wind speed predictions but says based on modelling over the past few days it all points to a burst of severe spring winds on Monday afternoon and then easing rapidly on Tuesday.

“This looks to be very sharp and about a day to half a day long, so fairly short. Within 24 hours most places should be calmer again but winds could be severe enough for a time in exposed areas to cancel flights, make driving dangerous and cause some powercuts”.

WeatherWatch.co.nz says the weather patterns in mid-October are incredibly changeable and a shift in the lows and highs, even by a small amount, could shift the intensity of the predicted winds and the wind direction.  “The forecasts used in this story are based on several days of computer models all pointing towards some pretty windy weather in the coming seven days across New Zealand”..

– Image / Wind map for 7pm Monday

– WeatherWatch.co.nz