Despite a week of heavy rain in many places, this week’s poll was asking about the dry – specifically how concerned our readers and viewers were about dry conditions around parts of New Zealand.

The east of the country, the central part and some areas in the north have been dry for some time now, resulting in the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and WeatherWatch.co.nz teaming up again to help get a clearer picture of the specific rainfall chances in the coming weeks for these areas.

While much of the country saw rain this past week (and continues to into the weekend) there are parts of New Zealand which remain at a low soil moisture level.

We wanted to know how concerned our readers and viewers are about the dry conditions around New Zealand – and the results seemed to split fairly evenly between concerned and happy with the current situation.

53% in total voted for “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the dry, while 36% were optimistic or happy with how things were going.

The 11% who said it was too wet – we imagine represent our West Coast readers – especially after a pretty dampy week!

– Drew Chappell, WeatherWatch.co.nz