Each morning this week we’re running our top 3 headlines of the day. Here’s what’s making the news for Tuesday Jan 4th.

HIGH PRESSURE CONTINUES TO DOMINATE NZ
High pressure looks set to continue to dominate most of NZ for the rest of this week and the weekend. The 7 day departure from normal maps for rainfall show most of NZ in the red and pink shading – which means it’s leaning drier. Some afternoon showers or downpours are possible in both islands, mostly inland and isolated.

White shaded areas have normal rainfall while blue shaded areas lean wetter than usual in the map below.

You can find our rainfall accumulation maps here.

HOT TUESDAY FOR INLAND NZ – TEMPS OVER 30C BUT COOLER CHANGE COMING
Today will be another hot one for many inland parts of the country although regions further south may not be quite as hot as they were yesterday.

The very upper South Island and inland parts of the North Island look most likely to break the 30C mark today, especially Waikato and inland parts of Auckland too.

www.RuralWeather.co.nz also has humidex temperatures (feels like) hourly for 10 days out in all hyper-local parts of NZ.

Tomorrow even cooler air moves into the lower South Island and cooler still by Thursday with some parts of Southland only just reaching the teens at the hottest part of the day.

TROPICAL TROUBLE MAY BE BREWING
It’s still unclear precisely where possible tropical storms may go but at least one, maybe two, tropical storms are possible between Queensland and Fiji in the coming 14 days.

This is simply reporting what is already showing up publicly in long range modelling – some of which show NZ being impacted. However it is far too early to lock in much more, other than there is a fairly strong possibility of at least one tropical storm forming over the next two weeks north of NZ. Whether or not any tropical nations – or even NZ – will be directly impacted is not yet known. Powerful high pressure continues to dominate NZ and they can help guide, or even stop, tropical lows.

One to monitor – we’ll keep you posted in our daily updates.

• WeatherWatch.co.nz