Weather Watch: Dry and sunny weather on the way

The weather this weekend looks likely to be dry and sunny for most. Photo / Mark McKeown

The weather for New Zealand this weekend looks likely to be dry and sunny for most, as more high pressure builds to the west of us and starts to push in.

A weak sub-tropical low dropped south into the Tasman Sea over the past 48 hours and if you live in Auckland and other northern centres you have no doubt noticed the jump in humidity over the past day or so.

Humidity was close to 100% at 7:30 this morning in Auckland (98%) with the air temperature around 21 degrees, it made the 'feels like' temperature (or humidex reading) 28 degrees. I'm sure many people had a bad sleep last night unless they had air conditioning.

An easy way to see just how high the humidity is, is to see how much condensation comes off a glass with chilled liquid in it. The glass of wine I had with my seared tuna last night was dripping so much it left a big puddle of water - the atmosphere around that wine glass was so humid it couldn't absorb the condensation, so it just pooled at the bottom of the glass.

For those who are camping the increased humidity would've made everything inside the tent feel slightly damp.

Today is going to be a hot day in the North Island. As of 8am Hastings, Napier and Gisborne were all on 24 degrees already, while many in upper North Island were on 22 degrees with humidity around 90%.

That low didn't have to bring rain and wind to have an affect on us.

To the lower North Island and into the South Island and it's a little cooler but by no means cold. Most main centres, as of 8am, were in the mid to upper teens.

This weekend a big, strong, high moves back on to the country.

For those returning from their holidays it means a great weekend to get out and mow those one metre high lawns you now have. For those about to go away on holiday, you're quite possibly looking at the most settled seven days in a row that we've seen in a month.

But all is not 100% calm. We are in a relatively small bubble of settled weather as of this weekend - but the tropics are still firing up, with more rain making lows headed into flood ravaged Queensland and now some new developments sparking up over Fiji.

My gut instinct is that February and March are going to be quite stormy north of New Zealand - all eyes will remain on the tropics for our next big rain maker.