General December Weather

[mikestormchaser]

Nice going there Richard good effort!

[NZstorm]

A bit of distant thunder to west of Timaru.

[Orion]

It's become very dark here in Ashburton, with rain hitting north-facing windows.

[Thunder]

Heard one decent rumble of thunder in Mount Somers, some rain for a time too now has come out mostly sunny.

Happy New Year everyone!

[03Stormchaser]

Nice heavy rain in Chch at present. Although has come at a bad time as im mid way through pulling my garage down!

[melja]

Thunder for about 2 hours this morning at lake benmore now very hot dry and bloody windy.

[Skywatcher]

Quite muggy here after that rain with the dewpoint reaching 18C.

[Dale]

Fantastic way to end the month.. and the year for that matter.. cracking great storms & torrential downpours from lunchtime onwards, to add to the already heavy rain during the early hours of this morning. Another thunderday, lost count of how many we have had this month.

Happy New Year to you all.. be safe

[Richard]

Lucky bugger Dale ,like the rest of Canterbury ,just a brief heavy shower here,now blowing its guts out.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Wish we got more than the 3.3mm that fell early this afternoon.
Now the NW blowing it's guts out.

[Richard]

Got 7mm here ,winds died down a lot too,had a high 28deg before the rain came

[Nev]

I see MS's Westport town site recorded 84mm in the 12 hrs to 3pm yesterday, bringing its monthly tally to 406mm, compared to the airport's mere 37mm and 278mm respectively. Hokitika Aero also managed 64mm in the 12 hrs to 2pm, or 259mm for the month.

Some other notable Dec rainfalls were 254mm for Hicks Bay (incl. 145mm in the 24 hrs to 9am on the 17th), 244mm for Kaikohe (incl. 86mm in the 24 hrs to 9am on the 16th), 234mm for Kerikeri Aero, (incl. 70mm in the 24 hrs to 9am on the 16th), 239mm for Whitianga Aero (incl. 88mm on the 14th and 79mm on the 17th), 237mm for Golden Valley, Waihi (incl. 133mm on the 17th and 72mm on the 14th) and 170mm for Whakatane Aero (incl. 121mm on the 17th).

Meanwhile, Timaru Aero only managed 16mm this Dec, Oamaru and Oamaru Aero 28mm and 26mm respectively, Chch Aero 34mm, and Dunedin City's 21mm yesterday topped its month up to 39mm.

[Richard]

Interesting,normally Westport would get less than Hokitika on a average basis

[Nev]

A cool start and warm end made for a mild December overall, with cooler average temps for the east coasts, but very warm for the West Coast/Fiordland region. A mostly dry month, especially in the south, but also very wet for Northland, BoP and East Cape. Sunny for central-lower North Island areas and most of the South Island, especially Westland/Fiordland, but cloudier in the north of both islands.

Dec 2014 Climate Anomaly Map ℅ NIWA.gif

Some very preliminary December 2014 figures for the main centres:

Code: Select all

Dec 2014 Average Temps, Rainfall and departures from their 1981-2010 normals ℅ NIWA

Site                      T-max °C       T-min °C       T-mean °C    Rainfall mm

Auckland, Mangere        22.2  +0.6     15.1  +0.3     18.7  +0.5      76   89% 
Auckland Aero            21.8   0.0     14.9   0.0     18.4  +0.1      65   75% 
Tauranga Aero            21.8  -0.4     14.5  +0.6     18.1  +0.1     145  153%
Hamilton Aero            22.1  -0.1     12.1  +0.5     17.1  +0.2      78   74% 
Hamilton, Ruakura        22.6  +0.6     12.9  +0.9     17.7  +0.7      88   90% 
Wellington, Kelburn      18.6   0.0     12.4  +0.1     15.5  +0.1     118  141% 
Christchurch Aero        20.9  -0.2     10.5   0.0     15.7  -0.1      29   62% 
Dunedin, Musselburgh     17.6  +0.3     10.5  +0.1     14.0  +0.2      34   42%

Note that NIWA's South Auckland rainfall figures are often considerably lower than for other parts of the region. Also worth noting that Greymouth Aero's Dec rainfall of 264mm was slightly above normal (although I suspect the township gets more), despite receiving 126% of its normal sunshine. Dunedin also had 131% of its normal sunshine.

[RWood]

A cool start and warm end made for a mild December overall, with cooler average temps for the east coasts, but very warm for the West Coast/Fiordland region. A mostly dry month, especially in the south, but also very wet for Northland, BoP and East Cape. Sunny for central-lower North Island areas and most of the South Island, especially Westland/Fiordland, but cloudier in the north of both islands.




Some very preliminary December 2014 figures for the main centres:



Note that NIWA's South Auckland rainfall figures are often considerably lower than for other parts of the region. Also worth noting that Greymouth Aero's Dec rainfall of 264mm was slightly above normal (although I suspect the township gets more), despite receiving 126% of its normal sunshine. Dunedin also had 131% of its normal sunshine.

I don't trust the sunshine maps much, given the number of data points using EWS readings against old manual averages. The Greymouth site as an example, will have a much lower value for the manual reading. South Westland and Fiordland shadings depend on the single Franz Josef site, which has had totally bonkers readings from April 2013 (I have again contacted NIWA about this) - and meanwhile Queenstown Aero EWS has gone wrong again from November 2014, not long after an earlier case of this.

Kelburn had only 173 hours - about a dozen days with 2 hours or less - putting it at about 4th lowest in 109 years of combined city site records, although there is a cluster of readings only a little higher, so it's more realistic to cite it as being in the lowest 10% - and all of those readings occurred after 1965.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

For December, I only recorded 29.8mm of rain which brought the yearly total up to 777.3mm, 189mm less than last year.

[Nev]

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

Soil moisture quite low for most of the country


The national average temp of 16.1C was 0.5C above normal.

The month's highest temp of 32.8C was recorded at Middlemarch on the 24th, and the lowest of -2.4C was recorded at Pukaki Aero on the 1st.