Wild weather set to ease a little as school’s out for the kids
After a late-week lashing of wild weather, respite is on the horizon as school holidays begin.
While parts of the country remain under wind and rain watches today from an unwelcome warm, wet and windy visitor from the tropics, others will experience a sharp drop in temperatures.
In the Garden City, where residents sweltered under a summery high of 28C on Wednesday, the mercury will plunge to a chilly 13C today.
Further south, it’ll be even colder, with highs of 11C expected in Ashburton and Timaru.
The switch won’t be quite so sharp elsewhere, but the whole country will notice a cool change following a late week of mild temperatures after an atmospheric river dragged warm, wet weather down from the tropics.
Today’s weather will be less dramatic than the past two days, albeit still wet and windy in parts of the country — but parents of school-aged kids now on a twoweek break will be relieved to know conditions are set to improve across the country from tomorrow, says MetService meteorologist Lewis Ferris.
“As we move into next week it looks a lot more settled than it has been this week. But that’s not to say there’s going to be no [poor] weather this week, there may be some smaller bands of rain passing through.”
Heavy rain in Westland over the past two days has caused slips, closing some roads, while floodwaters washed away a pier of a rail bridge over the Rangitata River in Canterbury yesterday.
A Marlborough township was put on evacuation alert due to rising river levels and Aucklanders faced strong winds and bursts of heavy rain on their morning commutes yesterday. Others in our largest city lost power, and some flights were cancelled a day earlier.
But while Auckland and Northland would enjoy drier conditions today, a westerly wind promised a breezy day in central and southern parts of the North Island, along with some rain — mostly in western areas from Waikato south.
The South Taranaki coast, coastal Whanganui, Manawatu¯ and the Tararua District are under a strong wind watch from 1pm to 10pm today, when winds may reach severe gale force for a time. Niwa warned winds would cause waves of more than 5 metres off the west coast of the North Island today.
A heavy rain watch has also been issued by MetService for Mt Taranaki until 6pm, and Tararua Range from noon to 9pm today.
The capital can expect a high of 16C and showers, some heavy from the afternoon, with thunderstorms possible north of Ngauranga Gorge. That would ease in the evening, but from late afternoon northerlies would switch to strong southerlies, gusting to 90km/h, Ferris said.
“It’s looking pretty miserable in Wellington.”
A heavy rain watch was also in place for Tasman northwest of Motueka until 3pm today.
But tomorrow a “smattering of showers” would be largely restricted to low-populated areas from the Southern Alps north to Nelson Lakes in the South Island.
“In the North Island . . . although it’s not looking particularly sunny, it’ll be drier and less windy.”