What a topsy-turvy week it’s been – with fireworks, record breaking temperatures, and typical spring weather both here and abroad.

We’ll start off looking back – at October, where we profiled the month in September, picking that the spring westerlies would set in, they did and we’ve seen some typical spring weather as a result, with gales, hot days, cool days and plenty of thunderstorms about the place.
You can check out specifics from NIWA’s climate summary here, including rainfall and sunshine statistics, orread about the record breaking temperatures across the ditch in South Australia!

We then turned our attention to the month just started, with our November outlook, and the pattern for November is shaping up to be very normal – with a healthy mixture of warm to hot nor’westers and cooler, showers, sout’westers.
We did pick the month to start off cooler than usual, and that certainly came true with a cold snap bringing rain, wind and snow to parts of the country this week – dampening many Guy Fawke’s celebrations around the country.

Sydney had the opposite problem though, with the mercury soaring to nearly 40 degrees(!) across the ditch last weekend, to register the hottest three day period of the year so far.
In fact, with all the rough weather of the last week, we tend to forget that the weekend leading into it was a hot one on our shores too!
Sunday saw several centres in the South Island pushing close to the 30 degree mark, with Kaikoura and Timaru getting close towards late afternoon.

Those with their eyes on the skies in the Aussie state of Victoria had a shock on Monday, with this amazing cloud formation prompting a flood of social media speculation, and even some talkback radio discussion!

To global issues now, and a Synthesis Report released on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sent further waves around the world, publishing some surprising findings. 
The report said that human influence on the climate system is clear and growing, with impacts observed on all continents. 
If left unchecked, the report said climate change will increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.

In a similar vein, an academic from the University of Melbourne this week said that climate change will not be catastrophic for farmers, as they can manage any long term effects – but it will be extreme weather events that will pose the most difficult hurdle to overcome. Read some of Agricultural scientist Professor Richard Eckard’s thoughts, here.

And finally, a new report published by Victoria University shows that kiwis are warming to solar power, with almost 60 percent of respondents to a survey saying they would like to generate some or all of their own electricity and would be willing to purchase PV (Photovoltaic)in the future.
It also identifies that greater numbers of Kiwi’s are already putting their money where their mouth is and investing in PV, with the number of grid-connected small-scale systems having grown by 330 percent in the last two years.

Remember to check out our latest weather word for your weekend, and check out our (now fixed) poll, here.

– Drew Chappell, WeatherWatch.co.nz

– Picture: Kang Matthew