Last weekend WeatherWatch.co.nz talked about a potential sub-tropical low affecting New Zealand.  While the low is still expected to rapidly deepen this weekend, directly north of the country, it no longer poses any threat to New Zealand, or our beaches. 

The low will track to the north east of New Zealand around 1000 to 1500kms to our north east.

But while that low is clearly set to miss us another low may not.  The Coral Sea and western Tasman Sea are both showing signs of activity and the long range maps seem to agree that a large scale low will form in the Tasman Sea and push onto New Zealand in eight days time.

While confidence this far out is always fairly low the various models we use seem to be in agreement.  The angle of a Tasman Sea low moving towards New Zealand also gives it a much bigger coastline to impact – our entire western coastline.  Lows from the sub-tropics have a much smaller area to hit, such as Northland, Coromandel and East Cape.

There are many different paths this future potential low could take so we’ll keep you posted over the coming week.

Image – Potential low next Monday (April 18th) / ECMWF

– WeatherWatch.co.nz