Super sunshine beating on
The glorious weekend weather is set to continue, with fine and sunny conditions forecast for most of the country today. After a hot weekend, Auckland is in for another fine day with a high of 25C, but isolated showers from late morning until evening.
Hamilton will enjoy a high of 26C, while Tauranga and Whangārei will be slightly cooler on 23C and 24C respectively.
The rest of the North Island will have similar sunny conditions with only the odd shower or two into the evening.
The South Island’s fine weather run will also continue, with temperatures in the mid 20s for most.
Yesterday’s top temperature was Kawatiri in the Tasman region, which got all the way up to 29.6C.
While it was a warm and sunny weekend for most, the period started with thunderstorms across the North Island from Friday night, continuing into Saturday morning. MetService recorded a total 33,218 lightning strikes in the 24 hours from 9am Friday to 9am Saturday. Of those, 27,087 were over land in the North Island.
There were also heavy downpours, hail and a funnel cloud that was seen near Taupo¯ .
“It was a classic case of all the ingredients mixing together for a volatile day of thunderstorms,” MetService meteorologist Tui McInnes said.
“We had cold temperatures up high in the atmosphere, calm conditions with sea breezes and warm moist air down here on the ground and of course, some good strong summer sun.
“The calm conditions that helped exacerbate the thundery conditions have disappeared as a front moves on to the country from Tuesday,” McInnes said.
“This is expected to bring some windy and wet conditions.” Cooler temperatures could be in store with some midweek southerlies, particularly down south.
A trough should move over central New Zealand during Wednesday and Thursday, and slowly weaken.
It would bring rain to most places, and strong northwesterly winds to parts of southern and central New Zealand. A new low pressure system is due to approach from the Tasman Sea on Friday.