Rain to return right on cue

The beautiful days of our delayed summer are about to take a holiday - just in time for the long weekend.

But they are expected to return in February, now that the summer is back to an almost normal pattern after a cold start.

For the three-day weekend, expect a gradual turn for the worse in the upper North Island, with increasing cloud and showers eventually turning to rain in most areas.

Sun-seekers will need to head as far south as Wanganui and Manawatu to be satisfied. There the effects of this week's fat high-pressure system are expected to linger a longer.

But further north, from Northland to the Bay of Plenty, the MetService expects a subtropical low and the gradually departing high to deliver warm and moist northeasterly winds.

"It may start off with showers and I suspect it will turn to rain in many areas as the weekend progresses," senior forecaster Steve Ready said yesterday.

"It all hinges on the high ... which will withdraw out to the east. We are looking for a subtropical low to move down into the area just to the north of the North Island.

"The only thing that could change is the positioning of the low but I think it's going to be hard not to get a northeasterly. Even if you don't get the worst of the rain, you are still likely to get cloud and some showers as a minimum in the upper North Island - Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, probably Bay of Plenty and parts of Waikato."

But while the prospects for a beach holiday may be poor, yachties participating in the New Zealand Herald Auckland Anniversary Day Regatta on Monday seem assured of wind in their sails.

"There's likely to be quite a brisk wind through the Waitemata Harbour and Hauraki Gulf area," said Mr Ready.

The unsettled weather is likely to continue next week, but the National Institute of Weather and Atmospheric Research says NZ is back into a more normal summer pattern.

Principal climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger said more large, slow-moving highs were likely to cross the country in the remaining weeks of summer. Temperatures were expected to be a little below average, but much less so than in December, when they fell short by 2.5C.