General April Weather

[RWood]

Here's NIWA's preliminary, 'April 2014 National Climate Summary'.


The national average temp of 14.5C was 1.1C above normal.

The month's highest temp of 29.6C was recorded at Whakatane on the 7th, which was also its highest daily T-max for the year so far.

The lowest of temp of -4.2C was yet again recorded at Pukaki Aero on the 29th.

Too many other record or near record temps and rainfall to mention…

Wellington's April was really lousy, but I still would take it over Chch's April, with its record low of 71 hours, only 45% of average, and less than 1/3 of the record high of 223 in 1986. Cases of sites recording less than 50% of the monthly mean sunshine are extremely uncommon.

[Nev]

Wellington's April was really lousy, but I still would take it over Chch's April, with its record low of 71 hours, only 45% of average, and less than 1/3 of the record high of 223 in 1986. Cases of sites recording less than 50% of the monthly mean sunshine are extremely uncommon.

That 71.0 hrs for Chch should actually be 73.8 hrs, as data for the 2nd is missing - still an April record and still only 45% of normal. Rangiora didn't fare much better with just 81.0 hrs, or 54% of its normal.

[melja]

Thanks for that Nev.

[RWood]

Thanks Nev, noted. If the data is known, NIWA should update.

[spwill]

I see the Niwa summary for Summer 2013-14 still shows AK Mangere on 242mm when the monthly rainfall amounts at Mangere ( Dec -Feb) total 166mm.

[RWood]

Wellington's April was really lousy, but I still would take it over Chch's April, with its record low of 71 hours, only 45% of average, and less than 1/3 of the record high of 223 in 1986. Cases of sites recording less than 50% of the monthly mean sunshine are extremely uncommon.

That 71.0 hrs for Chch should actually be 73.8 hrs, as data for the 2nd is missing - still an April record and still only 45% of normal. Rangiora didn't fare much better with just 81.0 hrs, or 54% of its normal.

Looking at other April lows from sites with reasonable exposures, I find only about 5 cases with totals below 74 hours - 68 and 63 respectively at Timaru and Waimate in 1938, and 3 occurrences for Invercargill, its lowest being 53.5 hours in 1949. None of those however scored as low as 45% of their normal, showing that the Ch'ch event was a most unusual one.