Stormy Wednesday followed by more cold unsettled weather

Wednesday, 5 June 2019

A building inspector ran for his life after a tornado struck the Far North.

Stormy conditions on Wednesday are set to be followed by more unsettled, chilly weather but there will be some bright spots in coming days.

Thunderstorms, heavy rain and gales affecting much of the North Island and upper South Island on Wednesday are the result of a low pressure system heading onto the country from the Tasman Sea.

MetService is expecting rain or showers for most of the country on Thursday. Snow is forecast to lower to 700 metres in Fiordland and Otago, affecting high level roads. It is expected to be fine, or becoming fine in areas from Gisborne to northern Canterbury.

On Friday, there could be snow on high level roads in the northern South Island, and possibly the Desert Road. Showers should gradually ease, and become confined to coastal areas in the South Island.

* Live: Strong winds start battering the north as storm brings rain, thunder, and snow to New Zealand

* Winter's right on schedule, and it's back to how it's always been**

Aucklanders could have to wait until Sunday for the next decent day, while there's a chance Thursday and Sunday could be ok in Wellington. For Christchurch, temperatures overnight Wednesday are expected to drop to -3 degrees Celsius, while Sunday holds out hope of being a cracking winter's day.

'We've got this low pressure system expected to move across the North Island tonight,' MetService meteorologist Peter Little said.

'That then moves away to the east on Thursday, and a cold southwesterly flow spreads up over the country.

'That will bring cold temperatures and some snow back, certainly to parts of the South Island, and possible parts of the Desert Road,' Little said.

'Things start to ease on Friday, then gradually there's an easing trend over the weekend as a ridge of high pressure builds.'

Auckland is forecast to have a few showers on Thursday, with widespread rain in the evening, along with strong westerlies - gale in exposed places morning and evening. Occasional showers are expected on Friday, with strong southwesterlies rising to gale in exposed places. Saturday could have a few showers and easing southwesterlies, The wind is expected to be down to a breeze by Sunday and it should be mainly fine.

In Wellington, Thursday morning should be fine but brief rain is expected late in the day, with a strong northwesterly developing. Strong to gale southerlies on Friday with occasional showers, easing in the afternoon. A fine start with northwesterlies on Saturday, then a few showers and strong southerlies later. Cloudy periods are expected on Sunday, with southerlies dying.

Christchurch is expected to have frosts early Thursday, then a fine morning, with a few showers from afternoon. Showers should gradually clear Friday and strong southwesterlies ease. Isolated showers are forecast to develop near the coast on Saturday. Sunday is expected to be fine after early cloud, with light winds.

Meanwhile, MetService was having to divert people trying to find out about the progress of Wednesday's storm to a back-up website. Its app was also affected.

'We've had intermittent outages on metservice.com since just after 7am,' MetService spokesman Brad Monaghan said on Wednesday.

'As a precaution we've issued all relevant safety critical information on our back up site, www2.metservice.com earlier this morning, and have redirected all traffic from metservice.com to this site.'

The back-up was a pared-down version of the main site, and held all brief forecast information for the country, along with rain radar information, and severe weather warnings and watches.

The cause of the outages was being investigated, but the top priority had been getting the back-up site running, and traffic re-directed to it.