Severe weather risks start today, even though a storm isn’t forecast until Monday as low pressure replaces high pressure over New Zealand, bringing instability. This instability will lead to hit and miss heavy downpours across the North Island in particular today, fuelled by a tropical northerly.

On Saturday and Sunday a subtropical low will deepen off East Cape and that will produce a cooler southerly, but as this low powers up it will see both rain and wind increasing around the eastern side of the country.

Precise tracking of this new stormy low early next week still can’t be locked in – but we show you various rainmaps to make sense of it all.

Due to the nature of this low, and because of recent landslides and flooding in eastern parts of the North Island, we will have special weekend video updates on both Saturday and Sunday.

The South Island’s is also exposed to some heavy rain and strong winds, depending on the tracking of this east coast storm next week.

Keep up to date with MetService warnings and watches.

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