KEY POINTS:
Oh the weather outside is frightful...well...not in New Zealand really. If you live in USA you're being pounded by a massive winter storm that may well give many Americans (and Canadians) a white Christmas. The North East of USA (north of New York) is getting the most snow...the
storm has already knocked out power to many and made travelling dangerous. London, England, isn't likely to have a white Christmas this year...unless you consider thick fog to be white...which it is I guess! The current forecast for London from weather.com is for cloudy or foggy conditions across the city on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Here in New Zealand the forecast that the Weather Watch Centre exclusively gave to the Herald first last Monday still looks pretty accurate. We haven't really made any major adjustments to it except that the wind direction in Auckland may well be a westerly and not a south easterly. That is significant for Aucklanders who are more likely to see cloudier, slightly cooler, conditions on Christmas Day. Cloudy and cool south easterlies are also likely to affect Christchurch and Dunedin. So this Christmas may well be a slightly cooler and cloudier one for many of our biggest centres - but one that we can still spend outdoors as very little rain, if any, is in the forecast.
So what's leading up to Christmas? Well a sub-tropical low is developing directly north of New Zealand and will move (quite quickly) south tonight. It's going to move over Northland, Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and other northern, central and eastern parts of the North Island late Tuesday or early on Christmas Eve.
Conditions are likely to be quite windy from the east or south east as it moves by. The rain clouds spell good news for farmers and it's good news to those holiday makers...who haven't yet gone on holiday...with a settled period of weather developing behind it!
On Christmas Day those winds should start to ease and even though a slightly cooler wind may be around on December 25th just remember that the sun is still packing a punch - UV levels are extreme and burn times are very short. I'll update you again on Christmas Eve about Christmas Day - and give you the latest forecast for New Years eve.