Weather watch: Ending on a high

This week is literally ending on a high, but all is about to change as the weather reminds us that winter isn't all about frosty mornings and beautiful blue dome days.

After a simply stunning week across New Zealand that started with sleet and hail in the east of the country but ended with Fieldays kicking off with frosts, mist patches and big blue skies, the mood is changing for the weekend with rain moving in from both ends.

The two culprits? A westerly front approaching the West Coast and a sub-tropical low in the North.

When you look at the extra wide weather maps you can see this westerly front is roaring along the Southern Ocean in a stream of westerly winds. Those winds will bunch up and push through the South Island valleys Thursday night and across Friday bringing strong to gale force winds well inland about the Southern Alps. The front will slam into the mountains and unleash a torrent of rain and MetService has issued almost a dozen rain warnings (as of Thursday afternoon) for these areas with up to 300mm forecast - which is a lot.

Meanwhile in the north a quickly developing sub-tropical low means regions hit by flooding recently are again in the firing line for more heavy rain. In particular eastern Bay of Plenty may see a deluge on Sunday as this low tracks down and sees rain clouds 'filling up' the Bay. Watch for rain warnings being issued - however computer models today certainly backed off a lot for an event here.

So a busy weekend again for forecasters but hopefully for the public it won't be quite so dramatic. The big high this week has allowed a lot of swollen streams to drain out. Bigger rivers aren't there yet though. I noticed rivers around Mystery Creek were still fairly swollen and high.

The rain has been good though - with farms seeing a boost in pasture growth with limited frosts and fairly mild days.

So I guess this weekend is another indoors one for many. Driest places will most likely be regions in the east from Canterbury to Hawkes Bay.

Check out our live winter solstice clock - counting down the days, hours and minutes until we hit the shortest day of the year!