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VIDEO: Wintry blast southern NZ, Lola’s leftovers later northern NZ

We track the latest on Severe Tropical Cyclone Lola which was still Category 4 this morning over Vanuatu. However NZ has a wintry blast coming later Thursday and Friday which is stealing our weather news headlines here.

The cold blast will bring snow to the ranges, heavy West Coast rain and snow to low levels in Southland and Otago…maybe on Dunedin’s hilltop suburbs early on Friday and into Queenstown too. It’s short lived but brings cooler air to the North Island too. Australia gets this blast first today and tomorrow.

Meanwhile as Lola falls apart over the next two days, it will merge with a small weak low near Brisbane to form a large Tasman Sea low by Sunday.

This isn’t a storm – but combined with powerful high pressure east of NZ it will likely encourage some heavy rain and windy sub-tropical nor’easters for northern NZ from this Sunday to next Tuesday, while the South Island has risk of frosts in some spots following the wintry change. Talk about spring!

Comments

Jack on 25/10/2023 7:39am

Do temperature recording stations factor in the heat island effect from surrounding structures? For example having a recording station next to an airport runway and one in a forest on the same day will record completely different readings.

WW Forecast Team on 25/10/2023 8:29am

Hi Jack – private weather stations don’t always have good measurements, but 80% of them do. The ones we use from MetService or those who have considered these factors dominate the data we use in news stories and videos. Any incorrect private weather stations (that are wildly wrong) can be manually removed by us if you see something wrong with your local observations.
Kind regards
WW

janet on 25/10/2023 4:31am

is this storm going to impact the lower north island please

WW Forecast Team on 25/10/2023 5:11am

Not much.

millsy on 25/10/2023 12:14am

Supposed to be end of October? We literally shouldnt be having this weather.

WW Forecast Team on 25/10/2023 3:05am

It’s mid-spring – the strength of this short lived cyclone is highly unusual, but the southern cold blast for NZ is not 🙂
– WW

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