Fine weekend on the horizon

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A sunny Queen's Birthday Weekend is being forecast for Hawke's Bay amid projections that temperatures in the region will remain higher than "normal" during the winter.

According to forecasting agency MetService, no rain is expected in Hawke's Bay before late next week, when temperatures in the Napier-Hastings area are currently forecast to climb back to peaks of over 20deg.

The June-August outlook issued yesterday by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) says there's an 80 per cent chance temperatures in Hawke's Bay, and Gisborne and Wairarapa, over the next three months will be above average.

There's also less than a 50-50 chance the area will claw-back on rainfall which was well below average last month - Napier recording less than one-fifth its May average 65mm, Hastings less than a third of its average, also around 65mm, and Wairoa just 16 per cent of its May average of about 130mm.

There was more rain in central and Southern Hawke's Bay, although the average across five stations on the Ruataniwha Plains was 58 per cent, Waipikurau having the highest at 72 per cent of the May average of 64mm.

Hawke's Bay Regional Council figures show that in three of the last four months, large proportions of the region have had less than 25 per cent of rain averages which are calculated over the last 30 years.

With less than three weeks to the shortest day, the forecast for much of Hawke's Bay today includes temperatures peaking at 16deg, slightly less than the average peak in the first week of June last year.

Rainfall in the same week in the Napier-Hastings area was less than 6mm. For the month of June it was also less than half the June average.