'Wintry weather wallop' to hit New Zealand this week - NIWA forecaster

New Zealand is in for a wintry blast over the next week, a NIWA forecaster says.

"We have a wintry weather wallop coming, in fact, this is going to come in three rounds, one on Wednesday, one on Saturday and another one on Sunday into Monday," Ben Noll told The AM Show.

Noll said the weather will first hit the South Island on Tuesday night, before making its way north to Wellington and Auckland from Wednesday afternoon onwards.

"There's an added shock value simply because we have not had it yet."

Auckland can expect high winds on Saturday too, which may be cause for concern after high winds from a storm in April 2018 knocked out power across the city.

"On Saturday morning in Auckland maybe 80,90 100km/h. We haven't seen winds in this magnitude in quite a while, still a couple of days to sort things out.

"But remember the April 2018 wind event in Auckland, we're not quite to that standard... probably a little lower than that but look it's not that far off."

Noll said South Island cities won't get above the single digits, while Auckland may struggle at around 10C or 11C.

"It's colder than we have been, this is not something that has not happened before... look it's been a pretty mild winter." 

Newshub.