Australia

Forecasts are going to be changeable for one week from now across the North Island due to a tropical cyclone that may well be still a long way off from NZ but might still influence our weather.

Latest tracking is good news for Vanuatu and New Caledonia with the storm tracking further west hopefully in the days ahead, pushing it further out to sea.

Cyclone Oma continues to lie over Vanuatu and will very slowly drift towards New Caledonia. It may then linger in this area for an entire week.

As for New Zealand we may still be impacted by this but the risk is low, around 30% as of today. We’ll keep you posted.

The second Tropical Cyclone in days north of New Zealand has formed and been named Oma by the Fiji Met Service. Current forecasts show it slowly tracking over Vanuatu and New Caledonia as a Category 2 storm over the coming days.

We had Cyclone Neil over the weekend near Tonga now two other lows north of New Zealand have cyclone potential but are likely to merge this week to create one big super low, possibly as large as Australia.

It's stormy north of New Zealand with at least 4 low pressure systems, one of which was a tropical cyclone briefly over the weekend (named Neil) and two more storms which may reach cyclone status in the days ahead too.

NZ is fast drying out and the big dry is now becoming much more concerning for some with long range forecasts suggesting little to no rain may be coming for those who need it the most over the next 10 days.

The weekend looks fairly settled in most of the main centres but some of the rural areas may be impacted by showers, like eastern Northland, East Cape and the West Coast.

Two large tropical lows will drift past East Cape on Sunday and Monday bringing some rain or shower activity.

Wednesday is Waitangi Day and the forecast will be colder and cloudier for a number of main regions and about half of the country from the south right up the eastern coastline to about northern Hawke’s Bay.

These southern and eastern facing regions in both islands look much cooler with some several degrees below average.

The tropics are about to switch up a gear with a number of big lows developing, including a possible tropical cyclone in our backyard but also a bubble of high pressure keeping some of this rain away from NZ itself. 

Following a spell of record heat and extended heatwaves across large parts of New South Wales, and Sydney's hottest day in more than a year on Thursday 31st January, a strong southerly change and rainy weather has brought welcome relief to the extreme temperatures experienced across the city.