NIWA said only on Tuesday – Near-record warmth expected for parts of the South Island 17 Oct 17 – I have been checking places like Alexandra, Dunedin, Christchurch but can see little trace of this. Does anybody know what October hottest day records would be?
Well they now say that “temperatures soared well into the 20s”, so the “Southern Spring Sizzle Sets Records”.
www.niwa.co.nz/news/southern-spring-sizzle-sets-records
Basically it was a warm day in southern NZ.
Of course NIWA doesn’t say how these temperatures, presumably measured with super-sensitive modern devices that capture upticks lasting only a few seconds, compare with old records made with thermometers that took minutes to react.
I see this place Otematata being featured but that is a private weather site at a holiday lodge.
otematata.info/
Good on them for sharing on www but I have never ever heard of a National Climate or Weather organization quoting data from private weather instruments. Who knows if the thermometer is in a standard screen, assuming that NZ has standards.
It is interesting to see NIWA touting temperatures from “one climate station in the Waitaki District topping 30 degrees” and from their map it is labelled Otematata. Note “climate station” I will address Otematata later.
In the 17th Oct article at Stuff they said – “Temperatures up to 15C warmer than average may be experienced in inland Otago, Southland and Canterbury on Thursday. On Friday, the warmth is expected to extend to northern Canterbury, Tasman and Marlborough.”
So I have checked the MetService data for 15 South Island “Towns & Cities” that cover the regions mentioned in Stuff. Alexandra looks to have had the warmest day relative to their average daily max
www.metservice.com/national/home
It is not easy finding basic weather stats for NZ – so to get the Oct average max I tried using
www.holiday-weather.com/
which presumably make their charts from basic stats from an official NZ source. They do not have all NZ towns.
Invercargill 22 = 8deg above Oct average max(14) and was = on 24th Sep.
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/invercargill
Gore 24 wow 3 deg higher than late Sep and 8.7 above Oct average max
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/gore
Wanaka 2 days @ 26 – a huge 4 deg above recent Oct highs. Did not find an Oct average max
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/wanaka
Queenstown a 24 deg – 8 deg above Oct average max of 16
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/queenstown
Dunedin nada for 20-21st – 22 on 19th but it was warmer in late Sep.
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/dunedin
Alexandra 28 on 20th – 10 deg above the Oct average max of 18. (Hottest heatwave so far)
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/alexandra
Oamaru little sign any unusual warmth
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/oamaru
Mount Cook 25 on 19th which is 9 deg above Oct average max
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/mount-cook
Timaru 22 on 19th which was way exceeded in last 30 days
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/timaru
Ashburton 24 on 19th compared 23 a few times in last 30 days – break out the bikinis.
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/ashburton
Christchurch nothing of note
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/christchurch/christchurch-city
Kaikoura 20 on 21st but it was 24 in late Sep.
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/kaikoura
Blenheim hit 25 on the 21st could be the heatwave – but it was 23 in late Sep. About 7deg above Oct average max.
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/blenheim
I found this site for Blenheim weather data –
www.mrc.org.nz/category/weather-data/blenheim-weather-data/
More about Blenheim later.
Nelson nothing on 19-20th but it was 21 on Saturday which = 3rd Oct.
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/nelson
Motueka 19 on the 19th but it was 20 on 3rd Oct
www.metservice.com/towns-cities/motueka
They sure play up the Otematata just scraping 30.1 degrees.
Funnily enough the reading does not register in the temperature graph for that day on the site, which peaks at about 29:
twitter.com/Otematata/status/921556677974884352/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fotematata.info%2F
I’d call NIWA’s story all sizzle and no sausage, only there’s no sizzle either.
That Twitter page is from the holiday resort lodge.
otematata.info/
as you say no sign of 30 degrees there on any day.
So we know the other Otematata site;
www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=ICANTERB59#history/s20171018/e20171018/mdaily
never cracked 30 either, so there must be a third weather station tracked by NIWA. So many weather stations for such a small place.
Warwick – Actually there are no fewer than 5 weather stations in Otematata on the map on the wunderground site you link to, and that’s not including the holiday resort lodge. Pretty amazing for a village of 200-odd people.
According to their published data, none of the six weather stations cracked 30 degrees on the 20th, but the one you quote is only showing hourly readings and the one for 3.39 pm on that day is 29 so maybe it got to 30 sometime in the hour around that?
The proliferation of stations is another way of getting records of course – in the old days you would never have had six different stations to pick from in a remote area of less than one square kilometer.
It is remarkable no other Otematata station hit 30. Remember that the Stuff article on the 20th said – “Niwa meteorologist Ben Noll said the warmest temperature across the country on Thursday was recorded 9 kilometres west of Otematata, in the Waitaki District, with 30.1 degrees Celsius reached.
There was no historic data for the Otematata site, so it was unknown if this had surpassed the October record for the township, he said.” Under that text is a photo of the “The Sailors Cutting camping area on the southern side on the Ahuriri arm of Lake Benmore.” A Google map indicates Sailors Cutting is approx 10k NW of Otematata – so could that be the NIWA site?
Thanks for the Stuff article and yes it does appear to be a reading from that campsite.
Re: “There was no historic data for the Otematata site, so it was unknown if this had surpassed the October record for the township”, he said.
– What sort of a weather station worthy of quotation by a national met office has “no historic data”? Did someone just light up the barbie next to a thermometer and see what happened?