The weather this week smacks of late February with some settled, warm, dry days in the mix – along with some showery days, a couple of weak southern cold fronts – and potentially a colder change this weekend while a tropical low drops southwards.

The low, which might become a tropical cyclone for a time around New Caledonia and Vanuatu, doesn’t yet pose a threat to NZ – but may well drop southwards towards us this weekend, or one week from today. But at the same time a powerful high (that may initially dredge up that southerly this weekend) may also stop that low from hitting us. We’ll be monitoring the maps as we go through this week with quite a few moving parts to focus on and still a few more days needed to confirm things.

We also have 5 and 7 day rainfall maps to make sense of it all.