Another night of thunderstorms in the north and wintry weather in the south continued last night as a large low continues to pull up cold air from the Southern Ocean and push it across New Zealand.

Large hail around 30mm wide fell in Auckland overnight along with a significant but short lived thunderstorm which created squally winds and torrential downpours.

Snow fell on the hills around Dunedin and wintry showers with hail are affecting a number of coastal areas today.

However WeatherWatch.co.nz head weather analyst Philip Duncan says the worst is now coming to a slow end but the cold, showery, south west flow may linger for several more days. 

“The computer models are showing a very large and nasty storm well east of the Chatham Islands this weekend and early next week and while it will be a long way from mainland New Zealand the nation will basically be the border between this large storm to the east and a similar sized high trying to move in from Australia”.

Mr Duncan says that basically means the south west wind flow over the country will continue for a number of days bringing coastal showers to the south, west and eastern coastlines.  Northern facing areas like Nelson, Marlborough and Bay of Plenty and parts of eastern Northland are likely to have the sunniest and driest weather he says.

“With this large offshore storm to the east we expect cold winds to hug the southern and eastern coastlines of New Zealand from the Deep South to East Cape” says Mr Duncan.  “Places like Wellington, Kaikoura and other exposed southern and eastern centres will only just be reaching double digit highs over the next five days”. 

Temperatures in Wellington aren’t expected to return to the mid-teens until next week.

One region has already seen a significant clearance today – the West Coast.  As predicted last Friday by WeatherWatch.co.nz the West Coast is enjoying the usual clearing of skies today as the south to south west wind kicks in and the Southern Alps block the clouds and showers for West Coasters.

Wednesday’s wind map shows strongest winds will be hugging both main coastlines with Auckland, Northland and Wellington most exposed – mapping by www.Weathermap.co.nz

REST OF WEDNESDAY
The rough weather still has some severe elements today.   The live and free Lightning Tracker is still showing plenty of activity across the North Island today, especially the upper North Island.  Squally showers, some with localised hail, thunder and potentially briefly damaging wind gusts will continue to pepper the western and northern areas of the North Island until tonight.  Showers will continue overnight but will become smaller and gradually lighter.

Hail may also affect other parts of New Zealand currently receiving showers. 

As of 10:30am MetService had no severe weather warnings in force for land and were indicating no more were likely from this event with the exception of the south eastern tip of the South Island which they say may receive severe gales on Thursday and Friday but rate the chances as “low”.

WeatherWatch.co.nz says with the sou’west flow lingering it means there is generally a low risk for further isolated thunderstorm across Thursday but that thunder was far more likely today and the risk significantly dropping overnight tonight.

– WeatherWatch.co.nz