Spring Weather Brought Fine And Wet Spells This Past Week

New Zealand has seen both rain and shine this week in typical spring fashion. The second week of the school holidays got off to a wet start for most as a low pressure system over the Tasman Sea spiralled bands of rain onto the country. The low continued to affect the country into Tuesday with thunderstorms popping up over the east coast of both islands during the afternoon. Christchurch got off to a bang on Wednesday morning with a thunderstorm forming over the city.

Despite a brief ridge on Thursday, which saw lovely clear conditions over the South Island, a series of weak fronts returned on Friday bringing rain to western parts and yet more thunderstorms; this time Dunedin residents got a show as thunderstorms on both Friday and Saturday passed over the city. Not to be outdone, Wellington got in on the action this morning, with some strikes in the Cook Strait before heavy showers made their way onto the city dropping 10.6mm of rain at Kelburn in 30 minutes.

‘With a deep cold airmass moving over the country during the later parts of the week, we saw favourable conditions for thunderstorms’ said MetService Meteorologist James Millward, ‘with the atmosphere primed for showers, the succession of weak frontal features we saw moving up the country acted as the trigger to fire up these thunderstorms’. Indeed, over 3300 lightning strikes were recorded over our little corner of the world in the 7 days from last Sunday to today, a significant proportion of these along the east coast of the South Island.

Looking ahead, an area of high pressure over the Tasman Sea slowly moves eastward towards New Zealand with settled and warm conditions expected towards the middle of the week.

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