An early Christmas forecast

Is a Tasman Sea low going to ruin the weather on Christmas Day? It's something I'm looking in to as computer models start to agree on what is most likely to happen next week.

Following Cyclone Mick that hit Fiji earlier this week and as intense tropical cyclone Laurence continues to move down Australia's west coast, the Australasian region is starting to wake up into tropical mode - and the low forecast for next week is another sign that conditions around New Zealand are becoming ripe for development.

The low we predicted isn't going to be a storm but may well come with some rain warnings. It's very early days yet but the last two runs by the Global Forecasting System do show a potential deep low moving across New Zealand around Wednesday.

The big question is - will it clear up by Friday, Christmas Day?

We have just launched our Christmas Day forecast - save it to your favourites because we'll be updating it daily and making it more detailed as we get closer to Christmas.

At this stage we're pretty confident the low will be moving out into the Pacific Ocean by Thursday but quite often the back end of these lows produces two or three windy days - a sou'west flow that is likely to affect the North Island especially.

That can be good news for eastern areas, however. With the low so close to the east coast it may make for cloudier weather.

We're going to track all the weather patterns very closely over the coming days. The good news, for those who want to get outdoors for Christmas Day, is the fact that the low is predicted to arrive on Wednesday - two full days before Christmas.

As far as who will get the rain on Wednesday, well that seems to look as though it will be northern New Zealand. But, like I said, it's still a bit too far out to be too sure. We'll have much better details by the weekend.