January set to end with a bit of drizzly weather

The last weekend of January looks set to echo the first weekend of the month when cloudy periods and some outbreaks of rain passed through Hawke's Bay.

After a fortnight of mainly sunshine and heat, a slow-moving easterly anticyclone has settled across north and eastern areas of the North Island and Metservice is forecasting the possibility of morning and evening drizzle patches through the weekend and into Monday.

Along with the cloud and possible moisture, temperatures will remain in the low 20s.

But the brief gloomy spells are set to give way to a solid spell of fine weather.

Metservice's long-range forecast from Wednesday through until next weekend is for increasing sunshine and heat, with temperatures set to hover around the mid-to-high-20s.

Metservice meteorologist Daniel Corbett said conditions had switched from warm, dry northwesterly systems to more easterly-driven systems.

"You could probably do with more rain up that way," he said, adding however there was nothing substantial on the immediate horizon. "Maybe February can bring you some."

Mr Corbett said Cyclone Garry, which was moving across the northern Cook Islands, was unlikely to have any effect on the weather for northern and eastern regions here.

He said it was a category three cyclone and likely to reduce to a category two as it moved away "affecting only the seagulls after that".

It was unlikely to produce major swells in Hawke's Bay, although it would in combination with strong wind systems over Northland.

And with the present anti-cyclonic conditions, there could be a rise in swells next week.

"But nothing out of the ordinary," Mr Corbett said.

The brief showers overnight had made no impact on the region's continuing big dry the Hawke's Bay Regional Council said.

Environmental management group manager Iain Maxwell said he anticipated irrigation takes linked to minimum flows in the Raupare Stream and the Waipawa, Upper Tukituki and lower Ngaruroro Rivers will need to cease next week if there is no significant rain as the rivers were very close to their low flow limits.

"We know this is a difficult and stressful time for growers, but there needs to be a reasonable amount of rain across the plains to increase the soil moisture and bring river levels back up," Mr Maxwell said.

"We are working very closely with irrigator groups to encourage them to roster and ration water, and work together to draw out the resource availability.

"It is vital that water users communicate with each other to coordinate their activities when flows are low, to reduce the chance of dropping rivers below minimum flows."