Sometimes our weather pattern can be stuck in a rut – either weeks of endless sun due to blocking highs that don’t move, or weeks of rain that eventually wears many of us down.

However the weather pattern this month is already showing it can do what it wants, when it wants, with conditions becoming more unsettled and trickier to forecast.

When a pattern is regular it makes long range forecasting (5 to 14 days out) fairly easy.    For example a big high that shows no sign of moving…or no highs which allow front after front to move in.

But at the moment we have a mixture of everything.  We have cold fronts that are pulling cold air from deep over the Southern Ocean.  We have tropical cyclones still developing near us.  We have belts of strong Autumnal westerlies.  We also have super highs moving in from Australia which are incredibly large, and we also have the La Nina nor’easterlies in the mix.

If the weather was art we basically have more colours to paint with now.

It means the weather of April should be more extreme – and if not extreme certainly very changeable from week to week and region to region.

Homepage image / Weathermap

– WeatherWatch.co.nz