THE ODD SHOWER STARTS CREEPING IN

Most of New Zealand is dry today but there is a few showers about, East Cape in the North Island and Taranaki may see a shower or two. In the South Island South Westland has a few showers, overnight heavy rain moves into Fiordland and expect rain for Southland with a cold front.

RAIN TOTALS POSSIBLE WITH COLD FRONT

The cold front mentioned above moves onto the lower South Island later tonight, moves northwards over the South Island on Saturday then reaches the lower North Island overnight Saturday, it weakens over the lower North Island on Sunday morning. Rain totals which are possible at various centres for the South Island and lower North Island over the course of this front are as follows. Keep in mind these are computer generated totals, some West Coast locations may receive 50 percent more rain than what is projected below especially up in the Main Divide.


Milford Sound 70.3mm

Greymouth 33.6mm

Reefton 32.3mm

Westport 35.5mm


Invercargill 25.2mm

Dunedin 11.2mm

Alexandra 18.6mm

Twizel 23.6mm

Timaru 12.9mm

Christchurch 16.4mm

Kaikoura 19.7mm

Blenheim 16.1mm

Nelson 18.2mm


Wellington 16.2mm

Masterton 8.4mm

Palmerston North 6.4mm


For your location visit ruralweather.co.nz (click here) and search for your town / centre in the search box, there you can find out what rain may be in store for you.

ATMOSPHERE MAY TURN UNSTABLE FOR THE NORTH ISLAND SAT / SUN / MON

This weekend and Monday there is the chance of a few isolated showers cropping up for the North Island (mainly upper half about inland spots) later in the afternoon’s due to day time heating and reasonable surface moisture. For a majority it will be mainly dry but if you catch a shower it could be heavy.

The graph below is for Hamilton, on Saturday / Sunday and Monday you can see a shower risk (rain chance) in the afternoons through till early evening’s. The totals (rain amounts) are not high at all but it is indicative of convective type activity, the computer (IBM’s Watson super computer) has chucked in a lightning symbol for Monday so it’s feeling a little bit of instability in the air although I would put it at a low risk at this stage for a thunderstorm.