Rain for Christmas

Barbecue might be off the Christmas menu in Taranaki.

The forecast for tomorrow is unambiguous. It’s rain. And some of it will be heavy. But the good news is it won’t be cold.

And a thunderstorm watch for the upper North Island, doesn’t include Taranaki at this stage, MetService meteorologist James Millward said yesterday.

‘‘But we are still expecting bands of heavy rain and rain to move south and into Taranaki over the coming days. It won’t be constant periods of rain but some of that will be quite heavy.’’

Taranaki was blessed with a mostly calm weekend in the leadup to Christmas but things began to look unsettled yesterday afternoon.

‘‘Monday is a similar story. Just periods of heavy rain and rain as it moves south over the North Island,’’ Millward said.

The weather tomorrow will be similar.

‘‘We’re still expecting these slow moving bands to keep on moving over the North Island with periods of rain and heavy rain,’’ he said.

‘‘It’s going to be a grey, wet few days for most of the North Island and unfortunately Taranaki doesn’t escape that.

‘‘There will be some, I guess, good news – it’s not going to be cold.’’

Temperatures tomorrow could hit 23 degrees Celsius in New Plymouth and will be in the low to mid 20s across the region. ‘‘So, not cold. Just grey and wet.’’

But after Christmas things are looking up.

‘‘Even on the evening of Christmas Day there might be a bit of clearance in Taranaki but Boxing Day and the 27th look a lot better,’’ he said.

‘‘You should be getting some nice sun and blue skies. From Boxing Day there is a real improving trend in the weather.’’

New Year is a bit too far away for an accurate forecast, but the consensus is the weather will be better, he said.