> From the WeatherWatch archives
Winter 2011 is over and we wanted to know how you found it? In our unscientific poll we just want to know how you generally found the past few months. Winter this year was warm to start with, mild in the middle then ended cold.
– Homepage image / Snow on New Brighton Pier from the August snow storm / Andrea Atkinson
Before you add a new comment, take note this story was published on 1 Sep 2011.
Add new comment
Guest on 2/09/2011 3:54am
While everyone else seems to have had plenty of snow this winter here in South Canterbury we have had the most setteld winter in a long time With lots of sunshine and little rain. Pretty much all the cold blasts have bypassed us expect for the one in august even that delivered only 1-2cm of snow to sea level while the rest of Canterbury got up to between 10 and 30cm at sea level.
Reply
Guest on 1/09/2011 5:42am
With 2 snow dumps of 6+ inches of snow, and a decent amount of warm sunny days, I really enjoyed Christchurchs winter this year .
Hoping we get plenty of thunderstorms as the weather warms up.
Reply
Yvonne on 1/09/2011 12:06am
An outstanding winter in Dunedin. Very few frosts and very little rain. Lots of brisk sunny days with virtually no wind. Apart from the occassional cold snap, it is the best winter I can remember in years. If last year is anything to go by, I am expecting a beautiful spring with a poor to average summer.
Reply
Guest on 1/09/2011 5:20am
yvonne, winter in Dunedin is this year has been quite normal for the city, relatively few frosts, dry and sunny with little wind, (after all it is almost always the sunniest main centre over the winter months and generally the driest (or very close) and not the coldest of the main cities), with just a couple of short sharp cold snaps for a couple of days, hopefully you are right another nice spring but last summer was ok especially the mid / late summer period which was warm and settled
Reply
RW on 1/09/2011 7:49am
The stats. support Yvonne. With August data almost complete it looks like being the 3rd or 4th sunniest winter on record for Dunedin, from site records going back to the 1910s, so in that regard its winter has not been typical at all.
The claim about being the sunniest main centre over the winter months is blatantly inaccurate. The 1971-2000 means show Dunedin’s average winter sunshine as clearly the lowest of the “6 main centres”. While its record in the last decade has improved considerably by comparison with the 70s and 80s in particular, updated 30-year averages to 2010 will not change that ranking.
Dunedin’s total sunshine over last summer (DJF) was only 443 hours, about 55 hours behind the current 30-year average and 75 hours below the average for all its recording sites’ history.
Reply