High pressure is dominating most of the country at the moment bringing a calm and fairly sunny weekend to parts of the country. As forecast there are cloudy areas too, with a few isolated downpours here and there – although more than 95% of New Zealand is dry.

Over Monday and Tuesday high pressure continues to hold over the country although it is slowly sliding eastwards – and this slight eastern movement will see more downpours popping up here and there in both islands. 

By Wednesday rain will be setting in to the West Coast with heavy falls.  This area of rain will move into the Nelson area later then Cook Strait and Taranaki overnight before spreading across the North Island on Thursday.

A southerly change on Thursday will also see showers in Canterbury – which is good news as WeatherWatch.co.nz unfortunately believes the two week trend for the drought zone is a drier than average one.

By Friday we may be back to the set up we see today, Sunday, with high pressure bringing a mix of sun and cloud with light winds across the country and perhaps one or two isolated downpours.

Another much bigger high is coming in for the middle of December, but between now and then we’ll be seeing a few reminders spring’s weather pattern is still slowly fading away. December is seeing quite an increase in high pressure compared to last month – that usually brings in better chances of sunny, calm, weather in summer.

– Image / Wednesday Dec 7th’s rain map shows heavy rain on the West Coast and high pressure moving away to the east of the North Island

– WeatherWatch.co.nz