With the Cricket World Cup kicking off this weekend, we wanted to know what our readers made of what is traditionally the hottest part of the year – several weeks after the official longest day.

People living in the lower South Island are the first to notice the longer nights and shorter days, since they enjoy particularly long daylight hours during December, January and February – but we’ve had emails and messages from people all around the country along those lines.

In our latest poll, we asked “Are you noticing the shorter days?” and the answer was a resounding ‘yes’ – with two thirds of voters saying they are “noticeably shorter now”, compared to (a pretty healthy) 27% who haven’t noticed the change yet.

Hopefully the cricket can continue to distract us through the rest of (our official) summer, and make the transition to autumn a little easier to bear for us summerphiles…

– Drew Chappell, WeatherWatch.co.nz