To me the hardest areas are Canterbury and inland Otago. Metservice think there accuracy is near 80% but how rigid are their guidelines for what’s accurate and what is not. Go Weatherwatch and please give us the new forecasts down this way soon. You guys are much better 🙂

I go with Christchurch and Timaru. The northwesterly never arrives on time and the fluctuation in temperature is often hard to predict.

Not sure is that’s the worst but Metservice forecast for Christchurch is pretty average. As an example, yesterday’s high was 17 but the morning forecast was for 23 and the day before forecast was for 25 that’s respectively 6 and 8 degrees out. Even WW was expecting a high in the mid 20s.
Whether NW winds will beat the sea breeze and reach the city is something that even with local knowledge and careful study of models is still hard to guess.
Southerly fronts reaching the area on a hot day and coming as a strong easterly instead is something else that is always missed by Metservice.
Christchurch recreactional marine forecast is usually pretty poor.

Northland weather must be a pain to forecast. Long and thin with some reasonably high hills in the middle. Often the forecast is for showers in Northland but they rarely reach the east coast if the weather is coming from the West. Would be good to have some more infor for each side and north south.

North Taranaki would have to be up there as Metservice just does not seem able to grasp how Mt Taranaki modifies the SW wind flow into a SE. Maybe it is because their computer grid system is too coarse to be able to take such an isolated mountain into account.

No doubt everyone will think their place will be the worst. It’s likely the West Coast though. There’s few indicators to the west of what’s coming and a coastline that spreads along much of the South Island. A forecast for ‘Rain from Afternoon’ is not likely to be correct for the whole region. But because no one lives there, it’s a little pointless splitting the region into smaller areas. Locals generally know how to apply a forecast to their area.

And before you say ‘it’s always raining on the West Coast’, have a look at the sunshine hours. It’s not that far behind Christchurch.

Probably be eastcoast south island,Christchurch a good example to get accurate forecasts (especially in the warm months) and Wellington city also is hard due to wind variations giving a complete change of conditions.