RWood wrote: It should be noted that in relative terms, March for NZ overall is as sunny as December, or a little better.
By 'relative terms', presumably you mean the actual number of average sunshine hours recorded relative to their potential daylight hours? If so, then one might also be able to argue that the traditional winter months are sunnier than summer ones. An interesting notion as one might therefore conclude that summer should be in winter and winter should be in summer.
Despite the fact that Wgtn is well south of the mid-latitude point of NZ's main islands, I like your idea of assigning 1/4 and 3/4 marks to define seasons based on temps. It would be interesting to see how all the combined North Island towns compare to the South Island ones, and indeed how the country would stack-up as a whole.
Yes, that's the case. Years ago I did an averageing of % possible for NZ sites, about 40 in each Island. It was a pretty good representation of the country on a population basis, not quite so good geographically. For the North Island there was a peak % in Feb, a little ahead of January. March, November and December were about equal, April only a little behind March. June and July were cloudiest with spring latency in the west meaning that Sept and Oct were cloudier than March and April in % terms. In the South Island Feb was a narrow first over April (!) but the summer-winter difference was much smaller, with December actually about last equal with July. The overall range was narrow there except on the Southland Plain (where autumn & winter were much cloudier than summer and late spring), and parts of North Otago and South Canterbury where winter was clearly sunniest and summer cloudiest.
If the data were updated now December would have improved its overall NZ position slightly, but so would have March, and Jan-Feb would be about a dead heat. Over a significant portion of the South Island there is still only a small seasonal variation.
Here's some results from a smaller set of places, 1978-2007. Quite a few assumptions, since published horizon profiles have not been updated for quite a while. But I think the numbers are a pretty good indication of seasonal variation. The numbers are the seasonal rankings.
RWood wrote: It should be noted that in relative terms, March for NZ overall is as sunny as December, or a little better.
Despite the fact that Wgtn is well south of the mid-latitude point of NZ's main islands, I like your idea of assigning 1/4 and 3/4 marks to define seasons based on temps. It would be interesting to see how all the combined North Island towns compare to the South Island ones, and indeed how the country would stack-up as a whole.
Yes, the problem is the tedious downloading of daily data for a range of sites. I think the eastern districts and South Island hinterland, which show the least latency (the latter the most marked), would have earlier seasons than Kelburn, and the north-western quadrant of the North Island a little later, as it has the most maritime latency. However the feature of Autumn being the shortest season would apply everywhere I think. One day when I get the energy I could try getting the "dailies" for a few other locations - say Auckland, Tauranga, Napier, Taupo, Wanganui, Nelson, Christchurch, Hokitika, Dunedin, Alexandra and Invercargill.
Noticed while at uni today - must have gotten very windy in the city in that last rain event, plenty of leaves and twigs/small branches along Princes Street, from the huge oak trees.
Yes many shredded small branches all over the road when I was there on Saturday morning.. was very careful about where I parked, those trees are notorious for dropping branches on cars in windy weather
yes i noticed that too, David. And how about the crossing at the lights?... jeez i hope the road works are done soon. thats just silly how it is. i had to wait 3 sets of lights to cross (i am walking). i was that far back in the que today. cant belive the mess symonds street is in at the moment.
My parents lawn was covered in green leaves and twigs after the wind. Normally they are blowen into the paddock but with the easterly they blew onto the lawn and made it a mess.
