Meanwhile, heavy rain watches are in place for the Westland ranges and Fiordland north of Doubtful Sound, and a strong wind watch has been issued for inland Canterbury.<\/p>\n
These come as a front, preceded by a strong and moist north-west flow, is forecast to move onto southern New Zealand tonight. <\/p>\n
The front will move northwards over the remainder of the South Island tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Burrows said Westland would experience a period of heavy rain until 8am tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Showers are picking up in the region, with the main period of heavy rain still to come. <\/p>\n
Aucklanders awoke to a thick blanket of fog this morning, causing flight delays and cancellations. Photo \/ Kerri Graham<\/p>\n
Burrows advised people to try to avoid low-lying areas, drive cautiously, and to ensure their gutters and drains were clear of debris.<\/p>\n
She said there is potential for slips, surface flooding and rising water levels in streams and rivers. <\/p>\n
The main area of concern is in the ranges in the Westland district.<\/p>\n
While there is a moderate chance the weather watch will be upgraded to a warning, Burrows said the weather had not reached warning criteria levels at this stage. <\/p>\n
Fiordland\u2019s heavy rain watch came into play at 11am and will stay in place until 10pm, with a low chance of being upgraded to a warning. <\/p>\n
Rainfall as high as 7mm had accumulated within the first few hours of the warning, with more heavy rain yet to hit the region.<\/p>\n
In Canterbury, strong north westerly winds have been forecast until 6am on Monday, with Mt Cook airport recording 75km gusts earlier today.<\/p>\n
A strong wind watch is in place for the high country and the plains near the foothills, and has a moderate chance of being upgraded to a warning.<\/p>\n
The winds are set to gradually increase and sustain until the end of the watch period, easing before dawn. <\/p>\n
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, heavy rain watches are in place for the Westland ranges and Fiordland north of Doubtful Sound, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6030,95,51,2199,29463,124,17752,23285,86284,2082,3594,2514,1452,20591,1304,51720,111,43,139,69,6029,6507,82112,240063,6560,7192,1240,61,701,5911,3604,10000,102],"class_list":["post-476455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-again","tag-and","tag-auckland","tag-city","tag-commuters","tag-could","tag-disrupted","tag-experiencing","tag-fog","tag-for","tag-hit","tag-island","tag-issues","tag-metservice","tag-morning","tag-motorists","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-once","tag-overnight","tag-patches","tag-patchy","tag-rain","tag-risk","tag-south","tag-to","tag-tomorrow","tag-tonight","tag-watches","tag-wind","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}