Tropical storm could dampen Easter

A tropical storm is building in the Pacific and threatens to dampen the beginning of the Easter holiday - but forecasters say New Zealanders should expect a fine, warm weekend before it arrives.

MetService said air temperatures were expected to reach 22C in Auckland today, and the weather would remain mostly clear, with some easterly winds, until Monday.

But the high that is producing the warmer weather was expected to drift away from the country next week, and new deluges could hit areas already swamped by rain earlier this month.

Fiji MetService raised its tropical storm risk to "high" yesterday and MetService's Severe Weather Outlook warned of a moderate risk of heavy rain for Northland, Coromandel Peninsula and Auckland.

MetService meteorologist Daniel Corbett said: "It looks like next week will be very different to this week. The tropics have been bubbling away for the past week or so, and there's various players who will start coming into the act that will slowly start feeding areas of moisture into New Zealand."

Most of the North Island was expected to get rain on Monday and Tuesday, and the biggest downfalls were likely to affect northern and eastern areas, which experienced flooding earlier in March.

Weatherwatch head analyst Philip Duncan said he was confident the storm would develop between Fiji and Vanuatu and track over the North Island early next week.

If the weather system was slow-moving, it could linger until the Easter holiday.

The Automobile Association said a poor weather outlook was unlikely to dissuade New Zealanders from making road trips for Easter.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) reported that the La Nina weather pattern was fading, but it would still have some influence on the next three months of weather conditions.

Niwa expected slightly above normal rainfall in the northern and eastern areas of the North Island.

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