Today (Monday) kicked off with warm temperatures at dawn across many of the MetService weather stations – Napier, Mahia and Tolaga Bay were above 20°C at 7am. MetService is forecasting that these humid days will continue and not just across the North Island.

MetService meteorologist Lewis Ferris says: “Duvets being kicked off the bed were probably a common occurrence last night, especially for Aucklanders where our airport station only dropped as low as 18.6°C overnight. The cause of the potential discomfort is an area of warm, humid air being dragged across Aotearoa New Zealand from the warm waters to our north.”

“This humidity looks to linger around our shores in the lead up to Christmas so it will likely be worth getting the fans out and knowing that the heat may be playing a part in your sweaty end of year stress.”

On Wednesday, the heat moves to the south and east of the South Island where Alexandra is picked to be the countries hotspot with a forecast high of 32°C. Christchurch is forecast to make 30°C on both Wednesday and Thursday. Even though the temperature looks to drop off overnight, we’re approaching the summer solstice, so the nights are very short which reduces the body’s ability to recover from the heat. Something to be wary of as we head through this week as we may issue heat alerts in the coming days.

Conditions around the country are generally settled this week but there is a low pressure system which passes to our south midweek which brings some rain and wind to the Deep South on Wednesday / Thursday.

Currently available information supports an influx of further humid air from the northwest this weekend. This air does bring the chance of rain alongside the sticky conditions and this risk extends into next week. You’ll need to keep a close eye on the Christmas Day forecasts towards the end of this week as there is still plenty of time for the forecast to switch between the naughty and nice list.

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