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North Islanders should be able to don sports gear and stow their parkas for most of the weekend: the week's storms have moved on.
"The next time Northland gets rain would be just a few showers on Sunday," MetService weather ambassador Bob McDavitt said last night.
The weekend forecast is for lighter and drier northwesterlies, replacing the moist northeast air flow over the country that flooded parts of eastern Northland.
Mr McDavitt said a front predicted to move over the South Island today should bring Wellington some wind tonight.
"As that front moves onto the North Island on Sunday it fades; a few showers, that's it.
"The main rain - that eggbeater of a low - has moved off. The blocking high is moving away now."
Looking back at the Northland deluge, in which parts of the region were flooded by three months of rain in 36 hours, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research said yesterday the intense downpours were more rare than first thought.
It was initially thought to have been a one-in-50-years event.
But Niwa climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger said yesterday that, based on statistical models, Mangawhai, Kaeo, Kerikeri and east of Whangarei had experienced the kind of deluge expected to occur only once in more than 150 years.
Kerikeri, at nearly half a metre of rain in 36 hours - a huge volume and intensity for the area - had received about half of the amount of New Zealand's record-holding site for intense downpours, a remote alpine valley in the Hokitika River catchment.
"As the climate warms, this is the sort of thing we expect to see more often," Dr Salinger said.
"As climate warming occurs, the atmosphere can hold more moisture and therefore more rain falls and therefore what we have thought of under past climate data as one-in-100 or more reduces."
