A tamer spring week is on the way

A tamer spring week is on the way this week as a large high over northern New Zealand slowly moves east out into the Pacific and a low in the South Ocean moves a front or two into the South Island.

This week's squash zone (where the isobars squeeze up between the low and the high) will be over southern New Zealand - but will slowly drift north to reach Auckland on Thursday (as nor'westers).

This week will be much quieter than last week's rough storm gales not likely in any main centres. Wind - both its strength and direction - will really shape our weather this week. The strong winds will develop overnight in the deep south and spread northwards slowly during the next 3 days. Wellington will be blustery on Wednesday and by Thursday it'll reach Auckland - although they'll almost be outta puff by then.

The winds, basically from the north west, will bring warm conditions to eastern areas, so again places like Timaru, Christchurch, Napier, Gisborne - may all see temperatures reaching into the lower 20s.

As I predicted back in early September, with no La Nina or El Nino the prevailing westerly will dominate (very normal for Spring). This favours warm, dry, conditions for eastern areas - for Auckland it usually means cooler conditions and plenty of low clouds about. But, in true Spring style, there's a catch to the warmer start to the week. The nor'wester is followed by a cold sou'wester - following the peak winds. So by Wednesday they'll be moving up the South Island, reaching Auckland by Friday. That means a cooler weekend is possibly on the cards this weekend.

So, any severe weather this week? Well, probably not - except for heavy rain in Fiordland (and perhaps the West Coast).

Actually I was having a discussion - ok, an argument, with a colleague of mine (originally from Southland) who says Fiordland was the wettest place on earth. We researched it and found that Cherrapunji (India) officially took the number one spot at 11.86 metres of rain per year. One of the Hawaiian mountains officially comes in at number 2. But there are estimates that a place in Colombia receives over 13 metres a year.

With him not satisfied that I'd proven him wrong we decided to email Bob McDaviit at MetService to see why Fiordland didn't even make it in to the top 10. Bob says there's insufficient data in the Fiordland area (no one lives there remember!) to work out exactly how much rain falls across the large region but estimations range from 11 to 13 metres.

So, all that did was fuel the argument even more! Perhaps I should place a call to NIWA and see what they think. Either way - Fiordland is one of the wettest places on earth - so it's no surprise that rain warnings are almost a weekly occurrence - and this week will probably be no different.

Philip Duncan

Pictured above: Ella Cort, left, and Rata Petherick, both aged three, from the Kid's Environment child care centre, attempt to catch bubbles in their mouths on the front lawn of Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell

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