A low is crossing New Zealand over the next three days bringing rain, showers, snow and plenty of sun too. The cyclonic wind flow means northerlies turn westerly today and tomorrow for much of the upper North Island while sub-tropical rain gets pulled southwards and then curves around into the eastern South Island in an east to south east flow.

This set up means New Zealand’s driest region at the moment, Canterbury, finally gets much needed rain. Perfect timing with all other regions finally getting more normal rainfall lately now Canterbury will be catching up.

The sub-tropical nature of this southern rain makes it set in much more and soak the ground – but the colder air around the South Island at higher elevations will see heavy rain falling as heavy snow. In fact WeatherWatch.co.nz says another one metre of snow is forecast for the mountain peaks over the weekend, increasingly the avalanche risk as we head into next week.

But the same mountains and ranges encouraging rain and showers for some regions will also make for some beautiful weather. A number of regions on Sunday especially will have sunny and dry weather as the low weakens and tracks further north east away from NZ by night – some examples are the West Coast and maybe Waikato.

– WeatherWatch.co.nz