We’ve got a few days of typical summer coming up…then some signs it could get wetter later next weekend.

To start with – we’ll see an inland trough bringing some big rain and storms down south over the next couple of days as a significant upper low sits to the south of the country. Up our way we’ll see afternoon storms develop over the hills on most days, with the odd one making it down into the valleys and towards the coast as well. Here’s the forecast rainfall over the coming week:

Beyond that there is a decent chance we’ll see winds turn more onshore, with showers moving in from the ocean. It’s out the range of the day to day forecasts for now, but longer term models have been indicating the chance of a wetter spell for a few days now. The CFS model highlights this pattern. Compare the forecast week 1 rainfall:

…with the forecast for week 2:

You can see it looking a lot wetter across our region in week 2. I’ll post more on the forecast change as we get closer. Looking even further ahead the La Nina is still in place – you can see it clearly on the sea surface temperature map below:

…but is slowly weakening. You can see the warmer temperatures starting to appear in the east Pacific. The sea temperature graph also shows the slow warming:

Models are in two minds as to what the Pacific will do next year, but I’ll keep an eye on the forecasts and post updates as we move into winter. This La Nina did not bring us as much rain as some of us expected (at least so far!) but the increase in moisture levels has done a great job keeping fire danger levels much lower than last year – one very good outcome. Fingers crossed we see something similar next year.