Philip Duncan looks back at 2011 and talks about the year ahead — At the end of every year you’ll see news stories about the weather over the past 12 months, and just about everytime the headline says something along the lines of “A year of extremes”.  Thing is, our everyday weather is made up of extreme weather events – it’s whether or not we have had more extreme events this year than average.   My feeling is that we haven’t. 

That’s not to dimiss the severity of some events – like Cyclone Wilma across northern New Zealand at the start of the year which caused $25 million dollars in damage.  Or the numerous damaging tornadoes across the country.  Then there were the Hawkes Bay floods, the Nelson floods and of course the big Antarctic snow storm in August.

They were all extremes – but there were big gaps of quiet weather in between – and up until the Nelson floods yesterday, we hadn’t really seen anything too severe since August.

And no region appears to have been “picked on” – by that I mean relentless storm after storm hitting one place all year, or even for half a year. 

But I’ll admit 2011 has been a very long year.  New Zealand hasn’t had it’s fair share of natural disasters – we’ve had too many.  The main one being earthquakes.  We’ve also had ash clouds, even tsunamis – albeit small.

This year has also been a bit tough with our sometimes public challenges of the rain radar network.  But now that it’s been resolved we gain better focus on our own products and can start putting into action some of the ideas you’ve been coming up with – like looking into Apps, better layout of some pages and a stronger regional focus.

2012 is going to be a significant and positive year of growth for the WeatherWatch brand. 

The ratings for our website have shot up this year – but with that growth comes added responsibility. 

So we will continue to work very positively with NIWA, Civil Defence, GeoNet and with MetService around warnings.

This year I’ll be spending Christmas Day with my family.  The grandmother, the parents, the brothers, their partners and my neices, nephews and my crazy golden retriever Harry.  (I’m aware pets take after their owners). I also have plans to eat more than I should, do as little physical work as possible and to watch as many Christmas Day comedies as humanly possible. 

I’ve also opted to work Christmas Day this year – because at the risk of sounding a bit sappy, I feel like WeatherWatch.co.nz has an online family now too.  It doesn’t feel like work to post a few updates on what is traditionally a quiet day for most and to say Merry Christmas to those of you who are also online that day.

Finally, to those in Christchurch, I appreciate Christmas this year may be a bit tougher than previous years.  Some still have no homes.  Some don’t have jobs.  Others have lost love ones.  We hope the spirit of Christmas still finds you – and I know that many people across the country will be thinking of you.

So Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all – and thank you all for your amazing support this year.

– Philip Duncan