The last week of November will be warmer and drier than average in many regions while December looks to kick off with a windier westerly flow.

This week high pressure, mainly centred in the Tasman Sea, brings a warmer than normal airflow across New Zealand with connections to the sub-tropics, Coral Sea area and Australia’s interior. It’s why we’re seeing smoke in our skies which is making for some incredibly fiery red sunsets and sunrises – but also a hazy look to the blue sky across the day. It’s helping push temperatures inland and to the east over 10 degrees above normal with WeatherWatch.co.nz saying that by tomorrow, Tuesday, some parts of the inland South Island would have reached ‘heatwave’ criteria.

For NZ this set up remains until December, but then we do see a change in our weather pattern when the new month arrives, thanks to a large area of low pressure south of us which is developing into a storm.

This big area of low pressure will time itself just as this large area of high pressure over northern NZ slips away. This will allow the low (which will fill the entire Southern Ocean from the lower part of NZ to Antarctica) to move in bringing strong, warm, west to north west winds early next week which could be up to gale force at times. The centre of the low should stay well south of New Zealand meaning we get the windy westerly portion.

Windy weather over September, October, November and the first half of December is fairly normal spring weather.

It’s possible that this low will be so large it will take all of the first week of December to churn by New Zealand in the Southern Ocean meaning this westerly flow next week looks like it will linger.

This set up also means more warmer than usual weather next week across parts of NZ with heavy rain returning to the West Coast at times. Only a few showers look to get into the North Island where it’s drier than it should be in a number of places for this time of year.

SUNDAY DECEMBER 1:

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 4

FRIDAY DECEMBER 6

– WeatherWatch.co.nz