General January Weather

[treetop]

pattern looks more North west than SW next week, warm in the East for sure. Last weeks rain will be evaporated away by then. Looking forward to less wind and warming seas ! [slowly]High pressure still dominating but over NZ rather than N Tasman.

[David]

I'm on annual leave this coming week, the weather is looking great! Heaps of sunshine, and warmer temperatures coming up as well

[spwill]

Auckland weather will be a little on the humid side next week until a weak front arrives Thursday, GFS.

[Manukau heads obs]

amazing the average windspeed here for january is higher than the winter and spring months was for here

[Manukau heads obs]

this is the first summers evening here of January where the temperature has not plumeted

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

Spent the day down at Geraldine, beautiful weather.
Back here gusty ENE.

[jamie]

Just been looking in my weather data. Super windy in past couple months and currently 2.6*C below norm for Jan.

Back home now. Much greener here than the drought like northland but getting rather dry here. Nice warm and calm afternoon here with a very notable sea breeze lifting dp from 8 to 16 in a couple minutes.

[NZstorm]

I have been looking at January's data on the Met Service website and the west of the South Island has been incredibly wet and cool. Check out both Milford Sound and Hokitika. Invercargill and New Plymouth look cool and wet too.

[Flutterbye]

I have been looking at January's data on the Met Service website and the west of the South Island has been incredibly wet and cool. Check out both Milford Sound and Hokitika. Invercargill and New Plymouth look cool and wet too.

It would feel a lot wetter in Invers if we didn't have the wind which dries any moisture up pretty well. Dunedin is running higher when it comes to rainfall.

[RWood]

I have been looking at January's data on the Met Service website and the west of the South Island has been incredibly wet and cool. Check out both Milford Sound and Hokitika. Invercargill and New Plymouth look cool and wet too.

Milford's rainfall is still far short of the 1983 January record though. New Plymouth's optimistic sunshine recording will make its month look better than it has really been.

[Orion]

A red sky this morning...

[Richard]

A red sky this morning...

Was a lovely sunrise this morning.

Nice to have had a day without the NW wind yesterday, its back again this morning, not that i mind really.

[Manukau heads obs]

amazing..no wind!!!

[Nev]

I have been looking at January's data on the Met Service website and the west of the South Island has been incredibly wet and cool. Check out both Milford Sound and Hokitika. Invercargill and New Plymouth look cool and wet too.

Yes, although Invercargill and New Plymouth are still about 1mm short of their normal Jan rainfall.

Has to be one of NZ's coldest Januarys overall though, both in terms of T-mins and particularly T-maxs. Mangere and Akld Aero's T-mean's are currently about 0.7C and 0.5C below their 1981-2010 normals respectively, while Hamilton Aero and Ruakura are about 1.4C and 1.0C below their respective normals. Bucking the trend in terms of near record T-maxs, however, are Northland and Gisborne/Hawkes Bay, with Napier Aero looking set to record its highest ever average Jan T-max.

Driest sites include NIWA's Gisborne EWS with just 1.6mm and its Napier EWS with 4.2mm.

[NZstorm]

Yes, although Invercargill and New Plymouth are still about 1mm short of their normal Jan rainfall.

What caught my eye was the number of rain days at Invercargill, over 20 days with 1mm+. New Plymouth not so bad with 12 days.


Napier looking to come in with 8 or 9 days for the month where the temp has reached 30C+.

[RWood]

Yes, although Invercargill and New Plymouth are still about 1mm short of their normal Jan rainfall.

What caught my eye was the number of rain days at Invercargill, over 20 days with 1mm+. New Plymouth not so bad with 12 days.


Napier looking to come in with 8 or 9 days for the month where the temp has reached 30C+.

Invercargill Aero record for January is 22 days in 1983.

[RWood]

NZ Herald quotes a NIWA person on the "move summer" annual fuss...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=11790197

Don't know where she gets "about a degree" of difference between January and February's mean temperatures - it's much less than that. As an indication, from 102 means for NI stations I get a difference of 0.23C in February's favour, while for 121 SI stations the result is 0.19C in January's favour. The combined list gives NZ means identical to 2 decimal places.

No doubt one can point out that the set of stations is not geographically uniform enough, but clearly the "about a degree" is simply wrong (or has been misquoted).

[Orion]

Stiffish southerly has suddenly bustled up here in the past few moments.

[David]

Another beautiful summer day here, temperature got up to 26.5C this afternoon.

[Nev]

NZ Herald quotes a NIWA person on the "move summer" annual fuss...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=11790197

Don't know where she gets "about a degree" of difference between January and February's mean temperatures - it's much less than that. As an indication, from 102 means for NI stations I get a difference of 0.23C in February's favour, while for 121 SI stations the result is 0.19C in January's favour. The combined list gives NZ means identical to 2 decimal places.

No doubt one can point out that the set of stations is not geographically uniform enough, but clearly the "about a degree" is simply wrong (or has been misquoted).

Yes, I don't think there would be too many sites (if any) with long-term Jan/Feb T-mean differences of more than 0.7C either way, with most being considerably less.

So in context of 'last February being an exception', perhaps she was referring to annual variations?

[RWood]

NZ Herald quotes a NIWA person on the "move summer" annual fuss...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=11790197

Don't know where she gets "about a degree" of difference between January and February's mean temperatures - it's much less than that. As an indication, from 102 means for NI stations I get a difference of 0.23C in February's favour, while for 121 SI stations the result is 0.19C in January's favour. The combined list gives NZ means identical to 2 decimal places.

No doubt one can point out that the set of stations is not geographically uniform enough, but clearly the "about a degree" is simply wrong (or has been misquoted).

Yes, I don't think there would be too many sites (if any) with long-term Jan/Feb T-mean differences of more than 0.7C either way, with most being considerably less.

So in context of 'last February being an exception', perhaps she was referring to annual variations?

Good call - the extremes are about +0.7 and -0.7 (though to be more precise one would want another decimal place for the separate means prior to doing the subtraction). She may I suppose have been referring to differences in a particular season.

[Razor]

Warmer and relatively dry month than normal here in Christchurch (Cashmere/Cracroft). Our part of town running 0.5C above the long term Jan average. If the forecast 30 high comes today it will be our 7th day over 30 degrees.

33mm of rain, average is 40. Much dryer and warmer than last January that's for sure

[drcam]

Hello, weathernerds!

Lovely mild morning here in Hobart, Tasmania, lovely walking to work!
Top temperature of 21 expected, overnight low was 11.7

We're running at +1.5C on the long-term average for January up to yesterday.
We've only had one instance of 30C or more this month, it got to 31.3 on the 8th.

I don't believe Chch has had more very hot days than us. Even though we are on nearly the same latitude we should still get more days of extreme heat when we get a NW that comes straight from the Australian mainland.

Our botanical gardens have a special NZ section, presumably because we're meant to have a similar climate. But being directly on the water we get much milder winters although we did get snow in the city centre the last two years.

[Orion]

Welcome, drcam

30.9deg.C here at present; mostly blue skies. gusty NW.

[einzack]

We've got our first 30 degree day of the "summer". Rather embarrassingly, my previous high temperature for "summer" was recorded back in October of 26.9°C
However, we reached 32.6°C earlier, though we're sitting on 29.1°C at the moment.

edit: Oh, and I know Milford Sound gets quite wet, but with 176mm already fallen today, with over 110mm of that in the last 4 hours and more forecast, it's definitely a day for the ducks!