Anyway going by what the general consensus is between the main forecast models, namely GFS, ECM and Metservice's model, it looks as though the area of high pressure that has been hanging around us is set to continue its march east (and maybe North too) and find a new hangout in the SW Pacific Ocean a good distance from us! This means the general area of low pressure that has been hammering the south East of Australia for the past few weeks will finally be able to head towards us and finally deliver a long period of wet weather. Unfortunately though for those away from the North and West coasts of both islands I feel this event will be marked more by the high temperatures you'll get rather than the rainfall.
The areas well exposed to the Northerly stream though should see heaps of rainfall from this system though and should see a vast improvement in soil moisture levels (though I'd imagine a few may swing from drought to flood given the amount of moisture expected to feed in from the NW). The main systems look like being a smallish low sucking moisture down from the Queensland coast on Friday the 17th as it heads SE from their towards our shores and then a much larger low moving ENE from the Tasmania region soon afterwards, reaching the mid Tasman by Monday or Tuesday. The Northerly flow ahead of this feature looks like developing a lot of rain to the West Coast of the South Island and given the Northerly orientation of this rain the East coast of the South Island looks like being very warm indeed on Monday and/or Tuesday, widespread temps in the mid 30's look a chance at this stage IMO. This would no doubt extend to SE regions of the North Island the following days.
As you can probably tell I am getting a wee bit excited about this event.
though I have been taking the models outlooks with the obligatory bucket of salt it does look a lot more likely that we will finally see some movement from the high pressure feast we have been having to a diet consisting of more low pressure systems! Which I know is not everyones cup of tea but definitely it is for this rain starved New Kiwi who spent way too long in West Ozzie! 
)
Nice steady rain too, max hourly rainfall rate was only around 5mm/hr.
