Weather brightens up for the weekend

Nuku'alofa after cyclone Rene struck. Photo / Supplied

Ex tropical cyclone Rene will combine with a front in the Tasman Sea bringing mostly gloomy, humid, drizzly weather to the upper and western North Island for the rest of today, while a low in the Tasman will see heavy rain across the West Coast and Mt Taranaki.

In fact rain will cover much of the west coast and central New Zealand for the rest of Thursday..

Humidity levels will remain around 100 per cent for the northern North Island today and tonight. With temperatures around 20 degrees it's going to be difficult to sleep again tonight with a 'feels like' temperature in the mid 20s.

Unfortunately Rene isn't going to bring much relief to Northland and neither is this front moving in from the Tasman. However I'm hoping the patchy showers that do fall, on top of the high humidity, could really help the grass grow.

I've had a lot of emails about the weather this weekend... lots of weddings, lots of outdoors events...the forecast is actually looking pretty good.

Thursday look fairly cloudy and drizzly for many places, then Friday sees a strengthening sou'wester developing. This is being caused by a very large high (about the width of Aussie) moving in from the west. Combined with the ex-tropical cyclone Rene to the east it could drive in a fairly strong south to south west flow over the top half of the North Island.

By Saturday the high will spread over much of New Zealand...so that means a mostly sunny, dry, hot weekend for much of New Zealand. This high should last right through until Monday.

So there we have it - a hot, humid, end to the week for many - then a sunny, settled weekend for almost everyone.

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