Wild spring weather: Heavy rain lashes North Island, set to ease Friday

A heaving low pressure system has lashed most of the North Island with up to 60mm of rain overnight.

Northland, Auckland and Waikato will have seen the worst of it by 9am, but Bay of Plenty was still to feel the affects and the MetService has a heavy rain watch in place for most of the day.

MetService meteorologist David Miller said 40-50mm of rain fell in Northland, Auckland and Hamilton overnight, but pockets in those areas have had about 60mm.

"There was some periods, as that front went through, of short duration quite heavy rainfall. There was a good 10-20mm per hour as that went through so it would have felt quite heavy for that short period of time."

Primarily the upper North Island was in the gun today but heavy rain warnings and watches are in place for Mt Taranaki and the upper South Island, around the Tasman and Marlborough ranges until later this morning.

Animation: #NewZealand's #weather in slow-mo as low pressure crosses over the North Island, followed by a wet westerly change.

(Video slowed down so you can absorb weather type & timings).

White = Cloudy
Light Green = Showers
Dark Green = Rain
Blue = Snow
Red = Thunderstorms pic.twitter.com/4q7boejzgg

— WeatherWatch.co.nz (@WeatherWatchNZ) September 22, 2021

"This front does go through this afternoon and evening and as we head into tomorrow its more of a westerly flow.

"Although there's still a few showers in western areas of both islands, so from Northland to Manawatu and then on the West Coast of the South Island, the same sort of thing.

But it will not be as heavy as it is today, he said.

Pockets of rain and showers will be felt around most of the North Island and the Bay of Plenty will have to wait until later this afternoon for the rain to ease.

Tomorrow is expected to be better than today - although infrequent showers can be expected - another front crawls up the west of the South Island on Saturday.

"There will be some more rain coming for western areas of the South Island but for the eastern parts of the South Island, it might be some scattered rain and for the remainder of the North Island it doesn't look too bad.

🌞🌏The spring #equinox has passed - the days now start to get longer than the nights! Days continue to grow longer up until Dec 22.

Happy "It's not yet summer but this is the start of tipping towards summer" Day! (May need a catchier title). 😎🌻⛱️🌦️ pic.twitter.com/Zns2h7nAz1

— WeatherWatch.co.nz (@WeatherWatchNZ) September 22, 2021

Wellington would bear the brunt of strong northwesterlies over the weekend, he said.

The front coming up from the south on Saturday will hit the bottom of the North Island about midnight, so periods of rain could be expected at some point on Sunday.