Weather Watch: Temperamental sparks

The La Nina weather pattern tends to bring moist conditions to the North Island. Photo / Thinkstock

While not a lot of rain has fallen in the past couple of months across most parts of New Zealand the 'typical' La Nina conditions are developing.

Last week we saw high humidity across northern New Zealand and at least two weeks of winds from the easterly quarter dominating the weather.

Within that flow pockets of useful rain moved in to Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel Peninsula, Bay of Plenty and even further south into the Tararuas and Canterbury.

So what is happening right now exactly?

Here is one of the long range models we use. These weather maps show what's happening in the south-west Pacific.

Have a look at them - and then you can see what I'm talking about. Using these maps - and other further reaching models and data I have access too, I can see a bit of life developing around us. At the moment it's the equivalent of trying to light dry grass with two rocks. We can see a few sparks but nothing is igniting.

The latest spark is a developing low north east of the North Island. This week it will deepen well east of East Cape but will be close enough to feed more south easterlies and cloud into the Gisborne area. It's possible a few showers may also make it this far west.

Another spark - and a much bigger one - is a low predicted to form this time next week in the tropics. This low - predicted by the models to be a large area of low pressure and not an aggressive system - should form in the New Caledonia/Vanuatu/Fiji area.

The forecast for early December shows a high over New Zealand being squashed as this large but shallow low drifts down from the tropics directly towards the upper North Island.

Whether or not it will spark into a solid rain making low for the start of December remains to be seen.

I think while rainfall numbers remain low for many there is a La Nina summer trying to kick start. It may be a summer that proves better for farmers than holidaymakers - especially in the upper North Island, where more cloud and rain is predicted over the summer months.