Muggy days to stick around for Rotorua

Rotorua is in for some sticky and muggy days right into the middle of next week. Photo / Stephen Parker

With above-average temperatures and humid air, Rotorua is in for some sticky and muggy days right into the middle of next week.

According to MetService meteorologist April Clark, the warm, moist air creating the muggy conditions is being brought down the North Island from the Pacific, with much of the upper North Island feeling the effects.

Clark said a ridge of high pressure was causing the humid air to stick around, creating a bit of "weather deja-vu".

She said most days would seem pretty similar, with the humid and sticky heat.

The humidity was not likely to go away until some time next week, with people most likely to feel it overnight or early in the morning, she said.

Sleep expert Dr Alex Bartle from the Tauranga Sleep Well Clinic said the reason people struggled to sleep in warm temperatures was because in order to sleep a human's core temperature must drop about 1C.

A hot bedroom environment prevented a person's ability to do this, he said.

The normal temperature the human body should be is between 35 and 37C.

A person would sweat in order to get back to down to this temperature internally, he said.

Bartle advises people sleep in cotton sheets that will absorb sweat and to keep a cool bedroom by closing curtains in the afternoon, positioning a fan to blow hot air out of the window or get a glass of water with ice and blow the fan over it.

Rotorua's temperature was sitting about 3 to 4C above the average for the start of autumn, Clark said.

Although the clouds were looking like they should produce some rain, "no significant rainfall is on the cards" for the foreseeable future, she said.

The last heavy rainfall for the city was almost a month ago on February 22.

The MetService rural monthly outlook highlights below-normal rainfall, and above-average temperatures for March.

The week ahead:

Today: 22C high, 13C overnight.

Tomorrow: 24C high, 12C overnight.

Thursday: 24C high, 13C overnight.

Friday: 22C high, 13C overnight.