Weather Watch: High moving through quickly

The weather this weekend, while not 100% perfect, will still be fairly good for getting outside. Photo / Hawke's Bay Today

The weather this weekend, while not 100% perfect, will still be fairly good for getting outside.

A large high is pushing in today and will give most New Zealanders a nice warm and dry end to the week.

For many it will also be the end of their holidays, so a chance to come home, air out the house and mow those lawns that are probably up to your knees and full of weeds.

In the lower South Island the chill in the air should start to ease (many main centres south of Christchurch have been struggling to reach 14 or 15 degrees this week) but the big high will change all that.

In fact - the high will be moving through fairly quickly and on the tail end of it those of you in the South Island's east coast will enjoy a nice, hot, nor'wester. Saturday looks set to be windy and hot for many in the south and east of the South Island with those windy conditions heading into southern and eastern parts of the North Island during Sunday.

For those north of Taupo the weather looks even better with a mixture of sunny and cloudy periods and light winds for most of the weekend.

Tropical Cyclone Vania

Ok, so I can't go entirely without mentioning this intensifying cyclone. Someone from Twitter sent me a message yesterday, asking me to be careful not to talk up the impending stormy weather as his parents own a campsite and lose a lot of money when the word "cyclone" is mentioned. I appreciated his message.

I guess this is a tough area. On one hand we have to think of the safety of campers, boaties and trampers. On the other hand we need to balance that out with sensible news bulletins and accurate predictions. WeatherWatch.co.nz prides itself on having long range predictions - and accurate ones at that. The current threat to New Zealand remains "significant" for next week. I told this person wha I've said to others. Go camping. Go hiking. Go boating. Don't cancel your plans. BUT - please be aware that this cyclone is quite likely heading our way... it will weaken before it gets here but it still will have the possibility of bringing flooding rains and damaging winds. I'm a camper - for 30 years I have camped in tents in the Coromandel Peninsula and further north in Northland. I am one of the campers that does NOT leave (even when I probably should). In fact I rode out Cyclone Drena in a caravan (not fun).

Sensible warning is not about scaring people off - but we want people to know the risks. Also to know that IF the time comes to pack up or hunker down for 24 to 48 hours - everybody is aware of it in advance. No one can say "but you didn't tell us". It's important to get information out in advance at this time of year, purely because some people on holiday love to stop reading the news. A last minute warning will do no good.

If you are planning on going camping in northern New Zealand next week just keep up to date with the latest weather news. The good news is that if Vania does hit us, the models are predicting she'll be gone in 48 hours. A small blip on the big long summer holiday radar.

View photos of Cyclone Vania's damage in Vanuatu.