Weather Watch: Tasman Sea low to bring on wet weekend

Photo / Duncan Brown

Another wet weekend is on the way as a new low develops in the Tasman Sea. Friday will see a settled 'breather' day for much of the country but the new developing low is going to bring more heavy rain to the country, in particular the North Island which is still trying to get its breath back after a week of heavy rain.

Northland, Auckland, Bay of Plenty and newcomer Taranaki have all had plenty of rain lately and the ground is becoming muddy. Taranaki has had a drier than average winter so far.

The low is likely to bring rain, heavy at times, to these same regions during Saturday, Saturday night and into Sunday morning, then spread further east on Sunday as the low deepens off the nation's east coast.

This may also provide south easterlies to the east coast of the South Island bringing miserable, grey, weather, cold winds and snow or sleet to a few hundred metres. It's still a developing low though and whenever a low is still forming and then crosses the country there is always an element of difficulty in pinpointing just exactly what is going to happen, where and at what time. It's tricky to work out in high detail in advance with these set ups.

But we are pretty confident of rain and wind over much of the country.

Yesterday it looks as though the low would be off the Hawkes Bay coast, now we think it may be a little further south. This increases the chances of rain/snow for Canterbury. I don't think we'll see snow in Christchurch but it's certainly going to bleak, wet and cold.

And if you're hoping this is the end of it, then you won't like the long range outlook. I am becoming increasingly confident of a stormy event happening Thursday to Sunday next week. The computer models we use have been consistent in their projections for several days now. It shows a deep and aggressive low forming in the Tasman Sea midway through next week then blasting the entire country with gales and heavy rain then during the weekend a bitterly cold southerly will hit the South Island - perhaps bringing some heavy snow to sea level.

This is just the long range computer models though and anything that's more than a week out isn't highly reliable... but the consistency of the model forecasts over a period of days certainly adds weight to this being a likely scenario.

Watch this space.

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