Another 24 hours of heavy rain and isolated thunders are in the forecast again for many parts of New Zealand as wintry cold front approaches New Zealand from the Tasman Sea today.

The front, expected to make landfall tonight along the west coast, will see clouds increasing throughout the day and rain arriving from this afternoon in the west.

A high north of New Zealand will be squashed by a low in the Tasman Sea, creating strong north to north west winds for many places from later today and into Friday.

Rain warnings are already in force for the West Coast and WeatherWatch.co.nz believes rain warnings may be possible for other areas.

However most of the regions recently hit by flooding should escape the worst of the rain – just Wellington and eastern Bay of Plenty remain at risk for more flooding rains.

Isolated thunderstorms are also in the mix as the front sucks cold air from well south of New Zealand and combines it with warmer air in the north Tasman Sea.

WeatherWatch.co.nz has “high confidence” at 90% for thunderstorms from Taranaki to Northland, including Auckland.  WeatherWatch believes the chance of thunderstorms will be higher for Auckland in this event than the Queens Birthday Weekend storm, however points out that again thunderstorms will be isolated and a 100km difference could see Aucklanders again miss the storms – or be directly hit.

As of 5am Thursday morning MetService had a “high risk” of thunderstorms for Northland and a low risk of “Severe” thunderstorms for Thursday night.  Their severe weather outlook doesn’t extend into Friday until their mid morning update on Thursday.