Wellington's wettest spring since wartime

Wellington has just had its wettest spring since World War II.

Niwa today released statistics showing the capital had a whopping 516mm rainfall this spring, smashing a 73-year-old record.

Rain fell on 63 out of 91 days during the season.

The previous wettest spring was in 1943 when 506mm fell.

The capital and surrounding region were inundated by torrential rain that led to widespread flooding a day after the devastating Kaikoura quake.

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With 516 mm of rain, #Wellington had its wettest spring on record by 10 mm!

63 of the 91 days (69% of days) comprising spring were wet ☔️ pic.twitter.com/zSb5HkRaaG

— NIWA Weather (@NiwaWeather) December 5, 2016

And although the start of summer is seeing temperatures climb into the mid 20s there would be a mix bag of sun and rain in coming days.

A slow-moving wet and windy front was due to hit the bottom of the South Island today and work up the country over the next two days.

A severe weather warning has been issued for the West Coast of the South Island tomorrow, where heavy rain is expected in Westland and Buller.

Central New Zealand is also in line for severe gales from tomorrow afternoon through to Thursday morning.

The MetService said a second front was due to dump rain on main centres on Saturday but the weather should start to improve again on Sunday.

Weatherwatch said aspects of the spring pattern needed to be flushed away before we could expect days of balmy summer weather.

Eastern regions of the North Island were expected to hit 30C in the afternoons, but temperatures were expected to halve in southern regions in coming days.

Christchurch would reach 25 but drop to 14C on Thursday.

Wellington was expected to be battered with strong winds on and off for the next 10 days and Auckland could expect patchy rain on Thursday and a burst of rain on Saturday followed by six days of wind.

Only Bay of Plenty and Northland would appear as if summer had arrived.

The weather for Christmas Day was still too difficult to predict as two main weather features would dominating the week.

There would either be a large high over New Zealand or starting to drift away, or a more La Nina- like sub-tropical rain band near eastern Australia and to the tropics directly north of New Zealand bringing rain.