Weather: Weekend downpours welcomed after dry May

Rotorua soils would have welcomed yesterday's downpours after a long dry spell.

Metservice meteorologist Andrew James said Rotorua got a good dumping with 31.8mm of rainfall in the last 24 hours.

This amount of rainfall was the most the city had experienced in almost a month. Only beaten by a 40mm downpour on May 3.

Local weather expert Brian Holden put out his monthly findings today, showing a cool and dry May.

The city's highest temperature was 19C on May 9, while the lowest was a chilly -2C on the 22nd.

The mean temperature was 10.4C.

There was a total of 83.7mm of rain throughout the entire month, significantly down from the city's typical May rainfall with the average being 157.9mm.

There were five frosts throughout the month and no notable wind gusts.

Looking ahead and the rest of the week was set to be mostly dry with night temperatures dropping again to 4C towards the weekend.

Occasional showers were forecast throughout the middle of the week, but mainly fine.

Metservice's monthly outlook showed that an intense blocking High was now dominating the weather map over New Zealand, and this meant any bands of rain or showers that move over the region will not yield well.

The drier theme was likely to continue through into next week.