Rain continues to fall over Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne regions but will ease this weekend to isolated showers. Other parts of the North Island and north eastern South Island have some wet weather through until about Saturday afternoon or Sunday when the risk becomes more broken up into showers.

Heavy rain is also falling in Auckland – this is not so much in our video today covering the rest of March (due to the timing of the rain being mostly today/Friday and it was a developing situation). Please track on rain radar and keep up to date with current warnings – with localised flash flooding possible in Auckland region on Friday. https://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/maps-radars/radar/rain-radar-realtime

#9pm: Heavier rain now moving back into #AucklandCity from the east. It's not as intense as it was this afternoon – but it's possible it could get even heavier in some suburbs.

Heavy to torrential rain continues on around #Mangawhai/#Brynderwyns.

Radar: https://t.co/sZ6VGec556 pic.twitter.com/MVJVqAzo8w

— WeatherWatch.co.nz (@WeatherWatchNZ) February 24, 2023

🚨Heavy rain in parts of #AUCKLAND may continue for up to 4 hours – it's a slow moving, unstable, changing event. cc @AucklandCDEM

⚠️Keep up to date with @MetService warnings & track heaviest downpours on radar: https://t.co/sZ6VGec556

⛔️Please avoid travel if that is possible pic.twitter.com/Fe9BOFqxz3

— WeatherWatch.co.nz (@WeatherWatchNZ) February 24, 2023

#Auckland: Today a weak but important low pressure zone near Northland acts like a roundabout – making the airflow 'traffic' get congested in the Auckland area.

This convergence is unstable, pushing up clouds & keeping some downpours stalled until the low moves through tonight. pic.twitter.com/1q5KtBsJ2x

— WeatherWatch.co.nz (@WeatherWatchNZ) February 23, 2023

🚨🌧️#Auckland: A small area of low pressure is drifting south today. It's just enough to add a bit more oomph into slow moving downpours.

It's why you're hearing a risk of "flash flooding".

Downpours may bubble up *anywhere* this afternoon – here's the current main risk zone: pic.twitter.com/9rEJmDvUgt

— WeatherWatch.co.nz (@WeatherWatchNZ) February 23, 2023

High pressure over the South Island continues this weekend with high pressure over more parts of the country next week – along with a few heavy afternoon downpours inland.

Australia has coastal showers in the east, rain in the tropics and a cooler southerly coming into SA, TAS and VIC following some very hot weather in SA recently.

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TROPICS
In NZ yesterday mainstream news outlets were quick to headline the next cyclone threat – but computer modelling is quite messy for this potential storm with no full agreement about A) any lows becoming a storm B) where any potential storm might specifically track.

So, for now the risk for NZ remains low – but for those in the tropics low pressure zones are certainly worth monitoring with the chance of a cyclone (or at least heavy rain in the tropics) in the first half of March.

It’s not to say a tropical storm won’t affect NZ in March – it’s simply saying, based on the modelling this week, it’s perhaps not NZ’s biggest focus for now – as we deal with other severe weather that is this week still impacting us.

As we did with Cyclone Gabrielle, if we feel confident NZ has a higher risk we’ll immediately have updates on it. But for now – have a good weekend and we’ll see you again on Monday.