What winter? Hawke's Bay to reach 19C

While farmers looked to the skies for rain, tourists are enjoying the blue skies and mild temperatures as sunshine is set to dominate the region for most of the week once again.

Metservice Meteorologist Larissa Marintchenko said the region would be dazzled by warm temperatures and northerly breezes before rain settled in on Friday.

Until then, Hawke's Bay remained protected from a spate of bad weather spreading over the rest of the country.

A ridge of high pressure drifted over the South Island on Sunday, leaving clear skies at night which dropped overnight temperatures. The front would slowly make its way up to the North Island.

Marintchenko said the weather patterns for the region would change once the front moved across the eastern parts of the country.

"You'll start to see some rain by Friday which might be good for the farmers, but not so good for those who want to relax in the sunshine.

"The weekend isn't looking much better with some heavy falls predicted and north-easterly winds."

Hawke's Bay would experience high cloud today with some scattered showers around Wairoa, but they would slowly ease off as the day progressed.

Despite a mixed bag of weather for the rest of the week, Marintchenko said the temperatures were climbing high for the middle of winter.

"Today Napier will reach a high of 15C, but on Wednesday it'll probably get to about 18 or 19C - so that's pretty nice.

"You'll be getting westerly winds again on Tuesday and Wednesday, so you're getting warm dry air for two days."

However the northeasterly winds at the weekend were predicted to whisk away the warm temperatures, leaving the region to deal with highs of 8C and 9C for Saturday and Sunday.

Hawke's Bay's varied weather patterns were down to an Enso-neutral phase - a period often coinciding with the transition between El Niño and La Niña events, according to Niwa.

Meteorologist Ben Noll said the winter weather extremely variable and would continue into the month of August.

"If the wind blows from the west - that means that it comes from offshore and it's generally a warm wind direction which means a continuation in that warmer weather that you've seen so far," he said.