Nice weather for NZ's Christmas Day

Sunny weather at Mission Bay. Photo / Doug Sherring

Well the weather outside is certainly not looking frightful this Christmas with NZ's Christmas Day forecast looking more and more positive for most people.

The big low that I was concerned about in my last blog is no longer being predicted by the computer models (that's always the risk when you're forecasting 10 days out) but my confidence now is getting much higher as the computer models, weather data and gut instinct (a hugely important factor in weather forecasting) are all pointing towards mostly dry, mostly hot and mostly sunny weather for the country.

The situation on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day looks like this: A large high will be slowly crossing the North Island with the centre passing somewhere around Auckland/Waikato/Coromandel Peninsula on Christmas Day. It doesn't get much better than that for those popular tourists destinations in Coromandel and Bay of Plenty.

However the bottom part of the high, where all the isobars are on the weather map, will scrunch up over the lower North Island and parts of the South Island. This means while it's likely to be dry in Wellington and Christchurch the northerly wind may become gusty - especially in Wellington. Our weather data for Wellington shows a north-north west wind averaging about 50km/h (gale force is 62km/h) however it will be dry and mostly sunny with a high near 20.

In Christchurch the forecast is a bit more tricky. As Cantabrians know, it's all about the wind direction. A nor'easter can bring cold summer temperatures to Christchurch, perhaps just 15 degrees with drizzle, whereas a little further inland a slight change to the nor'west sees sun and 30 degrees. This happened fairly recently. Now while I'm not expecting any such dramatic regional differences on Christmas Day I am wanting to highlight that the long range charts still aren't quite sure when the winds move from north or maybe even north-north east direction to north west. If this happens early enough on Christmas Day it could be the difference between a high of 23 and a high of 30. Either way, it's looking warm for Christchurch and Canterbury.

Further south and conditions start to go down hill. We see temperatures in the low 20s with a nor'wester (maybe hotter for inland parts of Otago) but a significant chance of rain or showers in Dunedin and Southland - along with blustery winds. I'm sorry to tell you that - and here's hoping the next couple of models show that high strengthening and shoving those winds and showers well south of the country.

So that's it for now - click here for our latest Christmas Day forecast.

Plus - the Live Santa Tracker is back - on Christmas Eve you and your kids (or grandkids) can watch as our radar detects Santa and his reindeer travelling from the North Pole and towards New Zealand. It updates every hour from 2pm Christmas Eve but you can already start to send Santa messages now. To see how it works click here.