There’s a lot of weather to talk about at the moment and that’s impacting holiday plans for many. Here are some maps to help make sense of where the worst winds and heaviest rain will be from today (Wednesday) through to Monday, covering the first full weekend of 2023.

It won’t be windy and wet the entire time – but NZ is generally in quite an unsettled period of weather for the next week or two.

We hope this information helps with your decisions around travel dates to find the best camping times. We hugely support camp ground owners and managers across the country too, and hope this information also helps you better plan ahead, by displaying the highest risk days weather-wise for those making potential changes to their bookings over the next five days.

• WeatherWatch.co.nz

⛺️It's going to be a long & windy night if you're camping.

🌬️Winds over 30km/h making sleeping difficult in a tent.
⚠️In some places gusts will be 70 – 100km/h (powercut potential for those in houses).

☔️Rain Map: Next 24 hours focused on heaviest rain
🍃Wind Map: 1am Thursday pic.twitter.com/Vw9OGmdVyK

— WeatherWatch.co.nz (@WeatherWatchNZ) January 4, 2023

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RAIN:
– Below are the rain accumulation maps to midnight this Monday (from today). There may be some locally heavier falls, especially around Auckland, Northland and Coromandel Peninsula.

In some locations 1 to 2 months worth of rain may be coming in just the next few days, so low lying areas especially in the east of the upper North Island (eastern Northland, northern Auckland, eastern Coromandel Peninsula) have the highest risk of slips of flooding. Heavy rain is also possible around East Cape, BoP and Nelson.

HOW MUCH RAIN IS COMING?

• Using WeatherWatch.co.nz or RuralWeather.co.nz (or our Free App) you can see daily rainfall totals and rain graphs for all locations in NZ, powered by IBM Watson, NZ’s most accurate rain forecaster.
• This link shows Rainfall Accumulation Maps for a week out – and you can use it interactively to see how it grows (or doesn’t change) day-by-day: www.weatherwatch.co.nz/maps-radars/rain/accumulative-rainfall
• MetService Warnings

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WIND
– Below we have wind maps courtesy of PredictWind showing where the worst (and most annoying!) winds will be for those camping / spending time outdoors between now and Monday. As you can see the winds do move around each day giving some a breather/break – however there are other locations that may have a bit of a repetitive set up.

Worst winds are mostly today (Wednesday) and hopefully easing on Friday / this weekend for a lot of holiday spots, especially in the north. So a couple more rough nights trying to sleep – then hopefully for many it does improve…for a time, anyway.

HOW DO I READ THE WIND MAPS / FIND LOCAL WIND SPEEDS?

• You can see at the bottom of each map a key showing wind speeds for each colour (in Knots – roughly double for km/h).
• If your area has no comments written on the map then the wind isn’t expected to be overly problematic for those camping in tents and awnings etc.
• Generally speaking areas in red and orange are the WINDIEST.
• Dark shaded / blue & purple areas show where the CALMEST weather will be.
• If you’re colour blind – or simply need a different way of displaying both wind speeds (ie, in KM/H) and wind GUSTS – then try using the Wind Graphs at RuralWeather.co.nz (covers all beaches and camping grounds in New Zealand) and they are very easy to read – good to quickly glance at windiest/calmest moments in your part of NZ over the next 10 full days ahead (and it breaks down to hourly if you need that too).

• WeatherWatch.co.nz / RuralWeather.co.nz