Here’s what is making the weather headlines today…..

UNSTABLE IN THE NORTHEAST – NORTH ISLAND

Yesterday we had some instability for Canterbury, Marlborough and up into Wairarapa. Today this instability shifts to the northeastern corner of the North Island, the ranges behind Hawkes Bay and Gisborne / East Cape is looking to be the spot.

Cooling in the upper atmosphere can be seen in the middle image below, temperatures at the 500mb level (5500m) are sitting at around -26 degrees celsius thanks to a cold upper trough / pool of air moving over in the afternoon. This helps create unstable air along with relatively warm surface temperatures and converging winds (ESE spinning out of a weak high to the east and the general WSW airflow coming in from the west).

Keep an eye on today’s thunderstorm outlook from Metservice for more.

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A COLD START – SOUTH ISLAND

A bit nippy this morning for parts of the South Island, especially inland for the lower half.

The frost risk is likely to be a bit higher where skies are clearer as in the cloud cover map below.

For more on temperatures for your specific location please go to ruralweather.co.nz and use the search function, there is a frost risk tab you can click on.

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RAIN OUTLOOK – WET WEST COAST

Plenty of rain coming up for the West Coast of the South Island over the next seven days meanwhile elsewhere is looking drier than average.

The bulk of the West Coast’s rain will arrive this weekend thanks to a series of fronts moving in from the Tasman Sea, further heavy rain is possible on Tuesday 17th October in a northerly airflow ahead of a low in the Tasman.

The precipitation percentage of normal map below runs through to Wednesday 18th October. Blue coloring means that part of the country is likely to see more rainfall than would normally be expected at this time of year, red means less rainfall is expected and white is an average amount of rainfall. The more intense either red or blue then either scenario is more true.