It’s the longest night of the year tonight for New Zealand & Australia with a fairly unsettled weather pattern impacting a number of populated places across both nations.

The wind and rain is being driven by a series of lows moving from west to east – with powerful highs to the north and to our east slowing them down and making them linger for days.

The lows aren’t overly stormy, but interacting with the highs is making for squash zones and gales, and pockets of heavy rain.

We track the wettest and driest areas – and the general weather them over the next week.

The winter solstice is Thursday at 2:57am in New Zealand (mainland), 12:57am for the eastern side of Australia and 10:57pm tonight for Western Australia.