“We’ve got a front that’s moving on, so that’s responsible for all the watches and warnings that we’ve seen. It’s brought a lot of rain and some pretty strong winds.”<\/p>\n
She said 211km\/h gusts were recorded in Canterbury high country, and Mount Kaukau recorded 135km\/h gusts. <\/p>\n
“So not surprising if we do see up to 130km\/h gusts for places like Wellington this morning.”<\/p>\n
She said there had been more than 3000 lightning strikes recorded across the country in the past 12 hours – with more to come. <\/p>\n
Watches and warnings were in place across the lower North Island and many areas of the South Island, which Keats said could get “lots of thunderstorms, squally with hail”.<\/p>\n
“We might even see some small tornadoes too for the likes of the West Coast of the South Island. <\/p>\n
“But that thunderstorm risk \u2014 which is where we see those real heavy downpours and those strong winds and hail \u2014 that risk extends all the way along the lower south, up through Dunedin, and then all the way up to Taranaki on the western side as well.”<\/p>\n
Keats said the upper half of the North Island, including Auckland, was actually looking “not too bad” for the weekend. <\/p>\n
“But we do have another low pressure system that’s going to start to move over, sort of forming out of the Tasman. It will hit the South Island or the top of the South Island. That’s going to bring another front that extends over the North Island as well, so it’s likely we will see a couple more watches and warnings issued for Saturday and Sunday.” <\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some more watches and warnings, especially for wind. It is spring; it’s really changeable, and we’ve got sort of four seasons in one day, and then it repeats for the next few days.” <\/p>\n
Current watches and warnings<\/p>\n
![\"Current](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/current-watches-and-warnings-according-to-metservice-H66BEJPFNJH43NFVQBELVHOMJE.png\")
<\/p>\n
Current watches and warnings according to MetService. (Source: MetService)<\/p>\n
Heavy Rain Warning – Orange<\/p>\n
Tararua Range \u2013 expires at 1pm.<\/p>\n
Headwaters of the Canterbury lakes and rivers about and south of Arthur’s Pass National Park \u2013 expires at 8am.<\/p>\n
Strong Wind Warning – Orange<\/p>\n
Wellington and Wairarapa excluding Tararua District \u2013 expires at midday. <\/p>\n
Heavy Rain Watch<\/p>\n
Ranges of Buller \u2013 expires at 9am. <\/p>\n
Strong Wind Watch<\/p>\n
Hawke’s Bay west and south of Wairoa, and the Tararua District \u2013 seven hours from 9am to 4pm today.<\/p>\n
Marlborough \u2013expires at 10am.<\/p>\n
Canterbury High Country, and Canterbury Plains close to the foothills \u2013 expires at 9am. <\/p>\n
Road Snowfall Warning<\/p>\n
Milford Road (SH94) \u2013 expires at 6pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wind gusts of up to 211km\/h were recorded in the Canterbury high country overnight, as changeable spring weather…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,3393],"class_list":["post-589187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-weather-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589187","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=589187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}