MetService News Release

Sunday, 13 Oct 2013

A windy and wet start to the week

Strengthening northwesterly winds are set to play a key part of the weather heading into the start of the week and a new school term.

A vigorous cold front moving northwards across New Zealand is likely to bring heavy falls of rain to the west of the South Island, while ahead of the feature, strong to gale northwesterlies will spread across many parts of the country, with the strongest winds affecting eastern and central New Zealand.

The topography of New Zealand, combined with a deep area of low pressure,will lead to areas of intense wind during Monday and early Tuesday. The strongest winds are forecast to be in the east with gusts around 120 km/h possible in inland Otago, coastal Canterbury and Kapiti, 130km/h in Marlborough and Wairarapa, and around 140km/h about inland parts of Canterbury and Wellington.

While the strongest winds are expected in the lee of the Main Divide and across the east of the country, the wettest weather will be in the west of the country and about the Southern Alps. Rain and cloud continuing to feed in from the Tasman Sea will lead to high rainfall totals for the West Coast and Southern Alps of the South Island, as well as significant amounts of rain for the headwaters of the lakes and rivers of Otago and Canterbury and about the Tararua Range.

The MetService severe weather team are constantly monitoring the situation,and have issued a Severe Weather Watch and Warning for this event.

This will be significant weather event to start the new school term and the situation will be updated regularly. Please keep up to date with the latest forecasts and any watches/warnings at metservice.com or on mobile devices at m.metservice.com. You can also follow our updates on MetService TV, @metservice on Twitter and at blog.metservice.com.

ENDS

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