It will be a windy weekend for a number of regions, with showers, some heavy with isolated thunderstorms developing over both islands today and over the days ahead – but dry and calmer areas are also in the mix. This weekend is especially windy around the North Island and for a time in the lower South Island. We break it down for you as there are a lot of moving parts (hence the longer runtime of our video today – normally we aim for 8 minute updates).

Next week the low finally moves off NZ and winds become lighter in many places as higher air pressure moves in – but with that comes the added risk of daytime thunderstorms and downpours, especially inland areas. Not everyone will get them due to our mountains and ranges breaking up the flow, but we show you the main risk areas… finer tuning of these forecasts will be done on Tuesday (Programming Note, due to Auckland Anniversary we have no video update on Monday).

We have NZ’s rainfall outlook to Sunday night and then the longer range outlook to January 31 as high pressure returns – but it’s not very powerful and we may still get some cooler air and showers later in the week. NZ is still going to get more wet weather in the final week of January – but some large dry areas in the mix too.