The Country 02/09/25: Phil Duncan talks to Jamie Mackay

Monday's weather expert on a Tuesday on the second day of spring, or is it?  Put simply, classic spring weather is kicking in for September with many cold fronts pouncing on New Zealand and southern Australia. But large highs are also in the mix, bringing settled weather, frost potential and even some subtropical winds. Welcome to spring! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Phil Duncan to wrap it from weather Watch. Now here's
a question for you, Phil, it's a hardy annual. Has
spring started or do we wait for the equinox?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah? No, spring has started. From a weather point of view,
we've got a fact textbook textbook, classic spring weather on
the way with lots of cold fronts mixed in with
high pressure zones. So we have windy weather at times.
We've got the squawly showers on the western side, and
most of the rain leads to the west, with over

(00:29):
the next two weeks the west coast getting you know,
two hundred to children and fifty millimeters at least on
the central part of the west coast, and the eastern
parts of the country are leaning drive th usual or
at least leaning drive in that being So it's kind
of a normal, windy, warm, cold, you know, all mixed
up kind of month coming up.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
It's a bitterly cold day at the bottom of the country.
I'm glad my days as a sheep farmer and being
on the landing beat are done. It'd be too soft
for it now, Phil. But following these southwest changes, we
do get a high coming and that's just the spring pattern.
But we do need to be worried about frosts, or
the horticulturists do.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yes, there are a lot of moving parts in spring,
and this week high pressure actually comes in over the
North Island around about Wednesday, and most of the country
gets the more settled weather. The winds finally fade out,
but as a result of that it means obviously we
get frost back again, so the South Island particularly frosty
Wednesday and Thursday, although the frost do reduce on Thursday.

(01:31):
The North Island's not looking quite so frosty, but it
is possible, especially in central parts of the North Island
on Wednesday morning, but by the end of the week
frost disappear. Windy weather kicks in spring light in many
parts of the country, but in the South Island. In
comes the next polar change that moves up the North
Island on Saturday with a few thunderstorms and heavy showers
again coming off the Tasman and by the time we

(01:53):
get to Sunday, polar air flow covers the entire nation,
so where we're back to feeling like winter on Sunday
with this polar air go right up north of New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
I was talking well to Mike Patterson a wee bit
earlier in the week, who was just saying, in Hawk's Bay,
for instance, they're just getting a tad dry.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah. In fact, you know Hawk's Bay has been sort
of in the central southern parts of Hawk's Bay, there
have been some pockets of dry weather that started back
in summer and hasn't been repaired during winter. In fact,
despite all the rain that we had at the start
of winter, which calls flooding all over the place, and
places that normally are dry like Nelson Hawk's Bay missed
out on it. So that rain shadow is going to

(02:31):
remain and possibly get a little worse over the next
couple of weeks. As again, I think the westerly flow
won't favor rain going into that area yet.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Okay, you a game enough to go out to Saturday
Eden Park seven pm.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
So there is a cold front moving into Auckland on
Sunday and Saturday. Sorry, and I literally mentioned this in
my weather video today. That timing of that front is
the thing that's going to be the hardest part, because
it's moving up the North Island downpours during the day.
They should clear in the evening, but they might go
on a little bit longer. It's a little bit hard
to notice.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Okay, soil duncan there from weather Watch