Tassie often gets first what NZ gets later. The Australian state shares not only similar weather to NZ, but many place names too.

"Weather forecasters spend a lot of time looking down at maps of earth and over the years you start to notice new things," says WeatherWatch.co.nz

"One thing we've noticed over the past few months is how often we're referring to Queenstown and the West Coast... but we're talking about Tasmania and not New Zealand!

"So we put these two maps together to show you just how similar Tasmania and NZ are name-wise. There's even one Maori place name in Tasmania, named after the Banks Peninsula settlement."

Over the coming days much of NZ's weather comes from Tassie - and you'll find more details about this (including use of these two maps) in the weather video above.