Here’s what is making the weather headlines today.

RAIN HEAVY IN THE NORTH / WEST COAST

A warm front brings rain north of Auckland today, more persistent in the east. Later on or overnight some persistent rain may affect Coromandel too. Meanwhile a stationary front feeds into the southwestern corner of the South Island bringing some heavy rain south of about Greymouth.

Metservice have a few rain watches out, see them here.

BECOMING HUMID ON FRIDAY – NORTH ISLAND

Dew points lift over the upper North Island on Friday into the late teens, perhaps even reaching 20 degrees. The dew point is a measure of humidity and the higher it is the more tropical feeling it becomes.

While relative humidity may seem a good way to measure if it’s feeling humid in the way most people talk about the word “humid”, in practice it’s not. For example, you can have an air temperature of 2 degrees and a dew point of 2 degrees therefore the relative humidity is 100%, but that doesn’t seem tropical does it? So the dew point is a better way to know if the air could have that tropical feel to it, naturally a higher dew point will only come along with warm temperatures anyway.

A dew point temperature of 10 degrees is fairly average, 11 – 15 is becoming more humid, 16 to 20 is definitely feeling quite dank and humid. A 20 degree dew point is something Fiji could expect.

Humid / tropical feeling conditions could hang around the North Island for the next seven days or so but Monday next week they look to ease for a time.

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STRONG WINDS TODAY FOR SOME

Easterly quarter winds for the upper North Island are quite strong today. Northeasterlies for coastal parts of the South Island may be a bit blustery also.

For any information on watches or warnings from Metservice, see this page here.