Across New Zealand there’s a theme emerging.  Recent polls at WeatherWatch.co.nz back it up too. It’s been a cold and sometimes dry spring, generally, across New Zealand – and with plenty of wind. But despite an ongoing drought in Canterbury, dry areas creeping into Marlborough and North Otago and heat records being broken earlier in the season, many other areas have had rain relief in recent weeks and many farmers are feeling optmistic heading into December.

El Nino tends to fuel more windy westerlies across New Zealand which typically makes for cloudier cooler weather in the north west, wetter weather on the West Coast and Southland and drier weather inland and out to the east of both islands – but as we’ve been saying all year, our country is so small it only takes a couple of large weather systems to make NZ buck the trend. 

The cooler weather this November in many areas is a sign El Nino is here – and the dry pattern forming in the east of the South Island is more evidence.

But so far this spring the North Island, along with western and southern parts of the South Island, are having plenty of rain events.  In fact some say this El Nino spring is wetter than last spring. 

The current poll at WeatherWatch asks if you’re concerned about a dry December. 31% say yes so far. 53% say the recent rain means December is now ok.  The poll closes on Friday night.

The poll the previous week asked people to vote for one word that best summed up Spring 2015 – “Cold” won, followed closely by Windy and then Dry.

Also a poll on the first of November revealed that 58% of New Zealanders were still using some form of “heat” each day to warm themselves up, whie 42% responded with “toughen up!”.

However the concern with El Nino is that summer may all of sudden dry out – the rain makers just suddenly stop reaching us and all of a sudden the spring rains quickly dry up.  There is currently no evidence this is going to happen anytime soon, but as we move into an El Nino summer we may start to see some areas drying out faster than others as our mountains and ranges start to block weaker summer rain fronts. Likely candidates for drier than usual weather this summer are areas inland and towards the east, which may be bad news for farmers but good news for many holiday spots.

The rain this spring in the North Island has been healthy for many farmers and growers – but the next four months in New Zealand are our driest usually, so all eyes will be on how the weather patterns settle and lie as we end the current spring pattern, probably later in December. Then we look towards the peak of the heat and dry from January to March 2016 and start to really focus on any dry patterns emerging early across the country.

– By head weather analyst Philip Duncan.   

– WeatherWatch.co.nz