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.