From 3pm Tuesday to 5am Wednesday, 54 mm of rain was recorded at Howick weather station. Just after 10pm Tuesday there was a brief torrential burst with a max rain rate of 125 mm/hr. The attached graphs show the rainfall and pressure from about 7am Tuesday to 8am Wednesday. Note the sharp fluctuation in the pressure around 5am - a drop of about 2 hPa and back up again within about 30 minutes! At this time there was a change in wind direction.


Looking at next week, there is plenty of unsettled weather coming up - showery and windy at times. There might be some thunder too. Then there could possibly be a colder change late week.

We sure have been reminded that winter is not far away during the last few days. Wednesday 2 May had a cool 4.5°C low and 15.4°C high. Thursday 3 May was even cooler with a chilly 2.7°C low and a 14.8°C high. Today, Friday 4 May had a low of 4.1°C. Note that these three minimums are lower than the extreme May minimums for 2010 and 2011 (5.6°C and 4.6°C respectively). Indeed it has been a cold start to May, but the cool temperatures won't last - next week should see nights above 10°C return, with some rain expected also.

In my previous entry I forgot to mention that in April a new record for highest pressure was set. The old record was 1035.5 hPa and the new record is 1036.0 hPa on the 20th April 2012.

We have some colder weather moving in this week. The week starts off unsettled on Monday and Tuesday as the cooler change works its way up the country ahead of an incoming anticyclone. By Wednesday we should have mostly fine weather. Next week could see our first 5°C morning of the season.

April thus far has been a fairly settled month. Plenty of mostly sunny to partly cloudy days. You will have noticed the cooler temperatures in the mornings during the past week or so. Here at Howick Weather the coolest morning of April so far was 6.2°C on the 19th. That was the beginning of a sequence of six minimum temps below 10°C thanks to a lingering large anticylone. With our anticyclone now departing we finally have a little bit of welcome rain on the way. It doesn't look like much though - and so it is looking likely that April's rain total will be under 30mm.

So far April has dealt us some very nice weather. On the 4th we reached a summery 24.9 degrees which was the warmest day since February. Then over Easter we had sunny day after sunny day. We should get a little rain this week, ahead of an anticyclone moving in from the Tasman Sea. The cooler S to SW change preceding this anticyclone should lower the daytime and night time temperatures and remind us that winter is getting closer.

Based on 94.7 mm of rain recorded by a good manual rain gauge, I have adjusted the rain readings on the weather station. I will continue to monitor the differences between the readings and will make small changes if necessary. Most of the historic information on the site for 2012 has been updated to reflect the rain total adjustment.

Bad news, the rain gauge seems to be reading too low, by quite a significant amount. I had my suspicions about this as the rain totals have seemed low for a few months now, but I could not see any reason for this to be the case. At the moment I am comparing with a trusty manual rain gauge (model name is Nylex 1000) to get an idea of what sort of adjustment is needed on the rain totals. Recent readings from the manual gauges suggest the weather station totals are much too low. More news once I decide what to do.

Howick wasn't too badly affected by the recent storm that passed over the central-southern North Island. Saturday (3rd March) had sunny periods, the odd shower and blustery W to SW winds. We only got 7mm of rain (mostly overnight Fri-Sat), and maximum wind gusts of 62 km/h were recorded on Sat. afternoon. We escaped lightly compared to the South Taranaki area which suffered quite a lot of damage. In contrast, today, Sunday, was a brilliant sun-filled day, with the temperatures a little cooler (min 8.6, max 21.7). We should see warmer temperatures returning this week.

The first Saturday of the new season looks to be a rough one for much of NZ, with a rapidly deepening low tracking quickly across the lower North Island. This is a serious storm. Metservice is warning of gusts as high as 150 km/h across the central and lower North Island - gusts this high have serious damage potential! In Auckland it won't be as bad as that, but gusts are expected to reach 100 km/h in exposed areas. So batten down the hatches, and make sure nothing loose is left outside in the open where the wind may pick it up. I will also post an entry to the blog after the event has passed.

Welcome to Autumn! Summer never really turned on the heat and high humidity in the end. The first few days of Autumn have felt just like it. Part of the reason our summer felt so poor quality would have been because of the long warm summer of 2010-11, which was about 1.7°C warmer than the summer we have just experienced. The sunshine hours were also lower than usual. The highest temperature for the whole season was only 26.1°C, normally we get up around 28-29°C as the seasonal max. There were only a couple of warm sticky nights - which are usually common in February. You can compare months across various years on the historical page.

We are now nearing the end of January and the changeable cooler weather continues. On the 24th January the weather station recorded a low of 9.1°C which is the coolest January temperature in several years. Another colder change moved up the country over the 26th/27th with snow to unusually low levels in the far south of NZ. The colder SW change arrived in Howick about 2pm on the 27th dropping the temperature to 15°C at 3pm - abnormally low for that time of day in late January. Often at this time of year we are seeing days over 25°C along with humid conditions - but the weather station had not even hit 25.0°C once during the whole summer! (although 24.8 was recorded on 2 days). Warmer weather should arrive soon as we head into February. Hopefully we'll have a warmer-than-normal March to make up for what 'summer' has thrown at us so far

As you will have noticed, the site has recently been redesigned, with new content and layout. Do you have any thoughts on the new site? I would love to hear them - please leave a comment below!

November has been a windy month so far, in fact the windiest recorded by this station so far in its 2 years of record-keeping. The weather has not settled into a stable pattern yet - the Spring westerlies continue to blow over NZ, but the rain-bearing fronts and troughs have become less frequent and less vigorous. It has been a dry month overall, with only 38 mm recorded so far. Wednesday afternoon was a nice reminder that summer is near, with a max temp of 24°C being recorded. Bring on the sunny summer days!