The Japan Meteorological Agency launched a geostationary weather satellite called Himawari-8 in October 2014. “Himawari” means sunflower, and the name has been given to a series of satellites that we can look forward to in coming years. “Geostationary” means the satellite rotates “in sync” with the Earth, always above the same point over the equator.

A satellite receiver ("dish"), for improved reception of data from polar-orbiting weather satellites, was installed at MetService Head Office in Kelburn in February 2013.

Benefits

Polar-orbiting weather satellites yield rich information about the atmosphere, valuable for New Zealand weather forecasting. Benefits of faster access to more data, and sharper identification tools, include:

On Thursday 26 July 2012 a cold southeasterly airstream flowed onto the North Island, around an anticyclone centred just east of the South Island.
In this blog post we’ll look at some interesting small-scale cloud structures around the country on this day.
Below is the weather map at midday on Thursday 26 July. The red arrows show the sense of the broad-scale rotation around the anticyclone.

Sunny weather dominated the country due to a large anticyclone covering the country and the Tasman Sea during the second week of July 2012. 

With clear skies over most of Canterbury on Monday May 11th 2009, there was  a good look at the fresh snow that fell the previous day, Sunday (10th May).  Here's the view late Monday morning  (around 10:30am) from NASA's Earth Observing System Terra Satellite,

Fresh snow on the Alps and Canterbury foothills - as @ Monday 11 May 2009. (Image courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC.)