There are signs that this elec­tion could have a good turnout. Advance vot­ing is about twice what it was at the same stage in the last two elec­tions, and there have been over 35,000 new enrol­ments since I post­ed about poor enrol­ment fig­ures: near­ly 1500 in Welling­ton Cen­tral alone!

How­ev­er, one thing that can still put peo­ple off on the day is weath­er. Accord­ing to the lat­est long-range fore­cast, Welling­ton can expect rain or show­ers, with a high of 13°C and a cool souther­ly change. This time of year we often get what mete­o­rol­o­gists call “a dis­turbed south­west­er­ly flow” across the coun­try: for Welling­ton, that means high­ly change­able con­di­tions, with a series of fast-mov­ing fronts bring­ing alter­nat­ing norther­lies and souther­lies. They can be tricky to pick more than a day or two ahead, because a slight change in tim­ing or a sub­tle shift in the direc­tion of flow can make a huge dif­fer­ence: from wet, gusty norther­ly to cold, show­ery souther­ly, and even fine and calm con­di­tions if we end up shel­tered by the South Island.

Met­Ser­vice are wise­ly not giv­ing any more detail than “rain or show­ers with a souther­ly change” at this stage, but based on my pre­vi­ous mete­o­ro­log­i­cal expe­ri­ence, the com­put­er mod­els give a bit more insight. Here are three frames that span elec­tion day.

Election day weather 2014 - animated GIFMy first thought was: “yuck!” The rain­fall pat­terns show that it’s high­ly like­ly to be wet at least some of the time, and the wind arrows show a shift some­time in the morn­ing from a good ol’ blus­tery norther­ly to a brisk souther­ly. How­ev­er, it looks like there are two fronts: a morn­ing one that brings a south­west change, and a lat­er one bring­ing a beefi­er souther­ly up the South Island. In these sit­u­a­tions, it’s com­mon for Welling­ton to get a brief respite behind the main front: we could end up shel­tered by Marl­bor­ough dur­ing the after­noon, before the real­ly nasty souther­ly arrives. If that were the case, then the after­noon could be a good time to ven­ture out to your local polling place and make your demo­c­ra­t­ic voice heard.

How­ev­er, the weath­er sys­tems are fast-mov­ing, and the sit­u­a­tion could eas­i­ly change by then. If you think that wet weath­er would put you off vot­ing (and I can under­stand that if there is no vot­ing booth with­in an easy, shel­tered walk from home), then I would sug­gest mak­ing an advance vote. The fore­cast and com­put­er mod­el both show that you’ll stay pret­ty dry any time from tomor­row morn­ing until Thurs­day evening, so get­ting your vote in ear­ly could be a smart move.