As night falls, flames from the Port Hills fire become more apparent. Photo: RNZ / Niva Chittock
The Canterbury region is facing "pretty bad" conditions with dry and gusty weather hampering efforts to put out a blaze in Christchurch's Port Hills.
About 130 firefighters, 25 fire trucks and 12 helicopters are the blaze, which broke out in vegetation in the area of Worsleys Road, near Cracroft, shortly after 2pm on Wednesday.
MetService Meteorologist Heath Gullery told Checkpoint the current conditions in the afternoon were "pretty bad", with winds reaching about 40km/h to 50km/h.
"We've had warm north to northwest winds, [it will be] gusty through the afternoon."
The winds and temperatures should ease on Wednesday night, but it was set to get warm and gusty again from later tomorrow morning to the afternoon, Gullery said.
Temperatures could reach mid to high 20s tomorrow.
"We can expect those temperatures to lower a little tonight, but, again tomorrow, it's pretty bad conditions ... expecting dry weather again through tomorrow, daylight hours, again warm north to northwest winds, gusty again tomorrow afternoon.
"There is some brief respite ... tomorrow evening, it will bring temperatures down into the mid-10s but very little rain, if any, is expected with that southerly change."
On Friday, some easterlies and cloud were forecast for Canterbury, including Port Hills, and perhaps a drizzle, Gullery said.
MetService said on X, formerly Twitter, that the smoke plume from the fire was easily visible on satellite imagery.
"Another plume from a fire near Rakaia is also distinguishable. Both plumes are blowing across the Pacific Ocean reaching latitudes almost as far south as Dunedin within 5 hours.
"Hot, dry winds are forecast to continue across Canterbury until a cooler southerly wind arrives there tomorrow evening with a small sprinkling of rain."