He said it was \u201cquite a warm feature\u201d, so MetService was expecting temperatures to be a \u201cbit higher than normal\u201d. <\/p>\n
Once the front passes through on Sunday, there will be a return to wintry temperatures. <\/p>\n
The weather change is likely to reach the North Island tonight. <\/p>\n
Severe weather watches and warnings <\/p>\n
An orange heavy rain warning is in place for the ranges of Westland from 3am today until 11pm Sunday, with 200-250mm of rain expected and possible thunderstorms. <\/p>\n
The headwaters of the Canterbury lakes and rivers south of Arthur\u2019s Pass, the headwaters of the Otago lakes and rivers and Fiordland and north of Doubtful Sound are under the same warning. <\/p>\n
An orange strong wind warning is in place for the Canterbury high country from 9am to 9pm, with 160\u2013210mm of rain expected about the Main Divide and 110\u2013160mm further east. Freezing levels will be about 2200m.<\/p>\n
A heavy rain watch for Fiordland south of Doubtful Sound has been issued until 1pm. <\/p>\n
According to MetService\u2019s severe weather outlook for Sunday, there is low confidence of heavy snow down to low levels, which would affect South Island alpine areas and road passes. <\/p>\n
MetService meteorologist Braydon White said snow on the passes coinciding with the start of the school holidays meant there was a great opportunity to take the kids for a \u201cwonderful snow day\u201d. <\/p>\n
However, Kiwis are being warned to keep an eye out for any road snowfall warnings, which may be issued from Sunday. <\/p>\n
Prolonged rain into next week <\/p>\n
Lynden said the front was expected to pass quite quickly on the weekend but it will be followed by an \u201cinteresting low feature that spins up behind it\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe can expect some turbulent weather through the first half of next week,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Looking towards Monday and Tuesday, he said the top of the South Island, the East Coast, Marlborough and potentially northern Canterbury could be in for \u201ca prolonged period\u201d of severe weather. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s also some risk of the lower North Island being in for a prolonged period of rain, and Wairarapa, which is particularly sensitive at the moment given they recently had a period of heavy rain,\u201d Lynden said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He said it was \u201cquite a warm feature\u201d, so MetService was expecting temperatures to be a \u201cbit higher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[806,2841,1668,4508,189,2956,109274,111,43,139,69,1523,18661,4062,2848,4497,6211,152331,35636,33210,4998,66366,66367,102],"class_list":["post-508546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-as","tag-country","tag-front","tag-hits","tag-holiday","tag-holidays","tag-lowpressure","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-pushes","tag-school","tag-severe","tag-start","tag-system","tag-tow","tag-turbulent","tag-warnings","tag-weather","tag-wet","tag-windy","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508546","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=508546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}