We’re in the depths of winter but you’d be forgiven for thinking we were maybe in September or spring with the wall of westerlies that have been blowing across a number of regions for the past few days. While not everyone has had windy weather, the long range forecast by WeatherWatch.co.nz shows there are plenty more windy days to come.

“We have a lot of nor’westers, westerlies and sou’westers coming into New Zealand for possibly the rest of July,” says head weather analyst Philip Duncan.  “The general weather pattern at the moment is seeing massive high pressure systems over Australia and stretching to our north – this places New Zealand on the southern edge of the highs where the strong westerlies blow”.

While windy westerlies in winter aren’t all that unusual, it is unusual to see week after week with strong westerlies blowing through.  “This is very much like the weather patterns we see around September in our part of the world.”

It’s not warm everywhere, though – a week ago some centres through Otago and in Canterbury were at -3 in the middle of the afternoon.  This was due to very calm winds and fog or cloud for most of the day.  The windier weather favours fewer frosts but does encourage a bit more snow on the mountains.

In 2011 we had a neutral weather pattern that saw record-breaking warm winter months in June and July, then a violent snow storm in mid-August saw snow flurries in parts of Auckland City and the hills of Northland.  

El Nino died away in Autumn this year.  There is some talk we are heading towards La Nina this spring, but right now the weather pattern feels more like El Nino (windy westerlies and drier in the east like Canterbury).  August may see a break in this current pattern, like it did in 2011, but it’s very hard to forecast in advance – especially when the long range maps show almost two weeks of mostly westerly quarter airflows.

While there may be some brief calm spells, or different wind directions, these aren’t likely to last more than a day or two before westerly quarter winds return.
 

Wind map for NEXT Wednesday (July 27th) shows windy westerlies continuing on and stretching from South Africa right across the Southern Ocean, south of Australia for the most part then straight across Tasmania the Tasman Sea and into New Zealand – indicating this could go on into August / Maps by Weathermap.co.nz

– WeatherWatch.co.nz