La Niña is officially over and now we’re in a “neutral” period of weather for the month of April, which usually indicates a fairly orderly set-up with storms south of New Zealand and Australia, high pressure still crossing both nations and the tropics still quite busy.

April can still see a lot of tropical life – but often it’s harder for these lows to move further southwards as high pressure zones start to move a little further northwards. But there’s still some breaks in the high pressure belt which may trigger some rainmakers for both NZ and parts of Australia. But the first half of the month doesn’t look overly stormy, although tropical lows/cyclones can break this forecast and there are a couple of tropical lows worth monitoring for the first half of the month.

In the long range maps out to the middle of the month it suggests stubborn dry areas may remain in both nations, despite some heavy rain areas.

Neutral weather patterns tend to be a little more “normal”, with prevailing westerlies in southern Australia and over NZ becoming more frequent at this time of year. But El Niño is developing and is likely to be here officially during winter, with Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology picking late winter in the NZ/Australia region.

We tracks the highs, lows, temperature changes and what is driving our weather/climate over the coming month of April.