Thunder and showers possible but no storm in Hawke’s Bay this week

Westshore Beach in Napier on Monday. There is a chance of thunder at the periphery of Hawke's Bay and showers across the region, but no full-blown storm is likely to hit the region this week. Photo / Warren Buckland

An approaching weather system isn’t likely to hit Hawke’s Bay at the end of this week, but parts of the region could still see thunderstorms and showers are expected.

Philip Duncan, head forecaster for WeatherWatch, said a weather system approaching New Zealand is looking more likely to be a “large low” rather than a storm, which usually has gale-force winds around the centre, and current tracking placed it more on the South Island rather than the North Island.

“The main rain band looks to only bring 10 to 20 millimetres to Hawke’s Bay at this stage - mostly on Friday. By Sunday, the westerlies kick back again - which is usually drier, sunnier and fairly mild for HB,” Duncan said.

“Generally speaking, a fairly good dry week is coming up, with a little bit of rain on Friday with a breezy nor’easter.”

He said there would be a few colder nights, but it was still looking mostly frost-free.

MetService meteorologist Luis Fernandez said there was the possibility for a few thunderstorms, mainly towards the western part of the region, on Tuesday morning.

“The current forecast doesn’t have Napier or Hastings included for the thunderstorms. The areas where we could see thunderstorms is just brushing the coast to the south of that and up towards Māhia Peninsula and Wairoa,” Fernandez said.

He said Wednesday would be mostly settled and sunny with temperatures in the high teens, between 15C and 18C across the region, while Thursday will have increasing cloud cover but still no rain.

He said temperatures could drop into the single digits overnight Tuesday between 3C and 5C.

“It does look like the rain does start to settle into Friday morning, and then Friday is generally looking mostly cloudy, with rain at least for the start of the day. There is still a lot of uncertainty as to exactly how Friday will play out.”

He said there could be heavy showers at times, but overall the precipitation across the region was “nothing out of the ordinary”.