General February Weather

[Nev]

Note that NIWA's summary says that Chch's 234.8 hrs of sunshine is its 3rd highest Feb total since 1930. The only figure I can find that beats that is the 266.3 hrs it recorded in 2003.

244.2 in 1978. Note that some EWSs in the region had pretty high values reported this Feb. (Akaroa, Rangiora).

Ah, thanks RWood. Think I might need new specs. lol

Rangiora (249.4 hrs) isn't too far ahead of Chch and I'd expect Akaroa (262.6 hrs) to be brighter.
I think all the old Campbell-Stokes type of recorders will eventually be fazed-out in favour of their automatic/electronic counterparts. Do you know if this is the case for Chch?

day time temperatures will be up, night time temperature down, on normal, I suspect

Very much so. The chart below shows the average max and min temps for main-centres and just how much they deviated from their 1981-2010 Feb norms (particularly Hamilton)…

Code: Select all

NIWA February 2013 Mean Temps °C 
Site                    T-max         T-min         T-mean  

Auckland, Mangere       24.1  +0.3    15.7  -0.5    19.9  -0.1
Auckland Aero           24.6  +0.5    15.7  -0.8    20.2  -0.1
Tauranga Aero           24.6  +0.6    15.0  -0.5    19.8  ±0.0
Hamilton Aero           26.2  +1.5    10.5  -2.4    18.4  -0.4
Wellington, Kelburn     20.9  +0.3    13.7  ±0.0    17.2  +0.1
Christchurch Aero       22.3  +0.4    10.9  -0.7    16.6  -0.2
Dunedin, Musselburgh    18.9  +0.4    11.9  +0.4    15.4  +0.4 

Edit: Amended NIWA errors for Wgtn T-max, T-mean and Chch T-max.

[RWood]

Ah, thanks RWood. Think I might need new specs. lol ).

Rangiora (249.4 hrs) isn't too far ahead of Chch and I'd expect Akaroa (262.6 hrs) to be brighter.
I think all the old Campbell-Stokes type of recorders will eventually be fazed-out in favour of their automatic/electronic counterparts. Do you know if this is the case for Chch?

On an annual basis - Rangiora was somewhat behind Ch'ch for several years - then after some adjustment or re-siting it suddenly leapt ahead - last year by 254 hours, with a total of 2388! That's way too much I think. Some sites have their EWS readings more or less in line with old values - like Kaitaia, Hamilton, Blenheim, Dannevirke, but too many seem to have a rather large difference in favour of the EWS. I think more research and checking is needed, since there's no doubt virtually all of the manual recorders will be phased out. To focus on one in my region - Paraparaumu has both types going at present. THe EWS is miles ahead of the manual, even though the latter has had quite good readings in the last couple of years - P'pu is just not that sunny. And to consider the most recent story, New Plymouth indeed had an exceptional month - its conditions and the capability of the EWS to pick up early and late sun could justify a total of around 80% of the possible in Feb, so a total of say 305 hours (a NZ record) could be feasible - but 330 is "over the top".

I computed Kelburn's Tmax ave for Feb as 20.85 - lower than I thought, but the large amounts of sunshine can fool one somewhat. Several days had cool southerly seabreezes.

[Nev]

I computed Kelburn's Tmax ave for Feb as 20.85 ...

You're correct RWood, which means NIWA's Wgtn T-mean is also 0.1C lower than it should be. Their Chch T-max is 0.1C lower than it should be, although its T-mean remains the same. Have adjusted the chart above accordingly.