Wild weather expected from Sunday night

A front of wild weather is expected to make landfall in Marlborough from late Sunday night, but there’s a good chance the region will escape the worst.

Cyclone Cody is expected to bring large easterly swells, significant sea surges and coastal inundation about exposed eastern coastlines – as well as heavy rain and gale force wind.

But the cyclone’s path is all but guaranteed, with Metservice meteorologists saying there is low confidence of warning amounts of rain and severe gale winds from overnight Sunday and on Monday.

A low confidence means there’s a 20 per cent likelihood, or one chance in five, that the event will actually happen.

“There remains some uncertainty regarding the actual track of Cyclone Cody, and the area that is going to be most impacted by this system and even small changes in the track may mean impacts could vary from place to place,” Metservice released in a statement yesterday.

Meteorologists are closely monitoring the situation and people are advised to stay up to date with latest severe weather watches or warnings.

• Cyclone Cody is expected to impact central and northern New Zealand from late Sunday into early next week
• At this stage, Cody is expected to make landfall over the Bay of Plenty.
• If the projected path of CODY from late Sunday and on Monday is correct then gale to storm force winds are expected to affect a large portion of northern and eastern North Island and the upper South Island.
• HIGH confidence (60 per cent chance) of heavy rain reaching warning criteria, gale force winds: Bay of Plenty east of Whakatane, Gisborne and Hawke's Bay.
• MODERATE confidence (40 per cent chance) of heavy rain reaching warning criteria, gale force winds: Great Barrier Island, Coromandel Peninsula, the remainder of Bay of Plenty, Rotorua, Taupo, Taihape and Wairarapa.
• LOW confidence (20 per cent chance) of heavy rain reaching warning criteria, gale force winds: Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Waitomo, Taumarunui, Taranaki, Whanganui to Wellington and Marlborough.