1News meteorologist Daniel Corbett with the Labour Weekend outlook, and a shift in the spring weather.
If you're looking towards the long weekend and what the weather will be doing, it’s looking good! A large ridge of high pressure will slowly wobble across the country for the rest of this week and into the first part of the weekend.
It will bring lots of fine and dry weather with just some patchy fog and early cloud at times. A brief spell of rain could move through early next week but some parts of the country in the east could be mostly dry for the next week to 10 days.
Temperatures will be quite pleasant in the 20s. Some places could frequent the mid-20s at times.
Is this fine spell of weather, thanks to a big blocking high in the atmosphere, just well-timed - or are the Super El Nino screws starting to impact our weather even more.
Let's dive deeper and take a look.
Firstly, the large ridge of high pressure that will dominate across New Zealand for the next several days is being fuelled by the significant mid-atmospheric warming that is spreading down from the northwest.
The warming in the atmosphere originating in the eastern Indian Ocean is very typical of the El Nino weather pattern. It shifts the rising and descending air in the atmosphere because of the change in water temperature anomalies.
This blocking high will stay with us over the next few days until it starts to shift east as the next cold surge (upper trough) from the Southern Ocean rolls in.
What is interesting about the next cold surge is the fact that it is looks less intense. Not as cold in the high atmosphere so not as much contrast of warm and cold to create clouds, wind and rain.
This seasonal shift away from intense cold surges is quite typical as the sun changes. It helps break down the polar vortex which, curiously, by the end of the long weekend will have lost half its height. Think of the polar vortex as a big ice slushy over the South Pole.
With no sun and complete darkness in winter it thrives, but once the sun arrives again at the South Pole and the sun angle increases, it starts to fade. That is happening in a big way this week which could help turn the corner on our spring weather.
Without the hand-break of the cold surges, the El Nino mid-level warmth will have freedom to spread the warm and settled weather further south.
We will still see rain and perhaps the odd cut-off low in the coming weeks but, with less intensity to the weather systems, there will be less chance for rain. Most of which that forms will tend to fall on western coasts of the country.
Get ready for some fine weather for the long weekend.
SHARE ME