Stormy week brings heavy rain, gales, with cold change as winter starts

Monday, 27 May 2019

The West Coast is in for another drenching this week, following on from the torrential downpours that led to the destruction of the Waiho Bridge in late March.

The benign late-autumn weather being enjoyed across much of the country is about to give way to heavy rain and gales, with things also turning chilly in time for the traditional start of winter next Saturday.

Niwa has said many places the length of the country are on course for one of their driest, if not the driest, autumns on record. But before the season ends on Friday - May 31 - many places could see some significant additions to their rainfall totals.

The west of the South Island is getting hardest hit - with a risk of heavy rain for four or five days, and the possibility some places could get half a metre of rain, or more in total over the period.

For Tuesday, MetService is also warning of a risk of heavy rain for the eastern Bay of Plenty, along with the potential for gale northerly winds in Taranaki, Wairarapa and Wellington.

* North Island to feel brunt of front ramping up on the West Coast**

That bout of stormy weather is associated with a trough embedded in a northwest flow expected to cross the North Island during Tuesday.

The South Island is expected to feel the impact of moist northwesterlies with several embedded fronts from Monday through to early Friday.

Most of the North Island looks like having a reasonable day on Wednesday but things are expected to deteriorate on Thursday and into Friday. Gisborne and Hawke's Bay don't appear likely to get much rain.

By later on Friday, strong southerlies are expected to be developing in the south, and by Saturday snow could be falling down to 500 metres in the Southern Lakes area around Queenstown, although there may not be much of it. The snow level could drop to 700m in the Canterbury high country.

Southerlies are expected in Wellington on Saturday, and all the North Island will be cooling down, at least by a few degrees.

The weather was expected to be 'pretty turbulent' throughout the week, with a prolonged spell of southerlies affecting most of the country by Saturday, MetService meteorologist April Clark said.

'The freezing level is going down, but the amount of precipitation is decreasing… There will be more snow about the mountain tops but we're not expecting it to be affecting places like Queenstown, at this stage. Things are cooling but it's also drying,' Clark said.

'The Southern Lakes forecast mentioned a bit of snow but we're not really expecting it to be significant in terms of the first big snow getting to low levels. But it's something to keep an eye on. We're still a long way out.'