Before the cold asserts its authority, New Zealand is being offered one last mild day — a brief, almost spring-like interlude that meteorologists know for what it is: the calm before a significant winter system arrives. By the weekend, heavy rain, severe gales reaching 120 kilometres per hour, and alpine snow will remind both islands that August has not finished with them yet. The pattern is ancient and indifferent: warmth retreats, fronts advance, and the land must receive what the season sends.