Yesterday a question was asked on our facebook page by one of our readers…

Just wondering if you guys were going to do a wrap of The Big Chill of 2011? I thought it would be interesting to see what the temps did in the cities and what the actual “feels like” temp was. Certainly felt like the coldest of days in Auckland?
PD

Good question and so we did a bit of homework…

All cities felt the chill of the southerly outbreak to varying degrees and Tauranga was the ‘mildest’ of the 6 main centres as it’s slightly more sheltered and Auckland surprisingly was third warmest on the list behind Hamilton.
Windchills saw Auckland drop to the minus 2 on the day the southerly blew in the strongest, with some sleety snowflakes.

Further south and Dunedin saw the southerly blast first last Sunday and temperatures got close to zero and the wind made it feel like minus 5.Wellington copped days of freezng southerlies and got as low as minus 7 in the wind and Christchurch dropped 2 more on Monday night last week and down to minus 9 in the freakish southerly.

Other centres and areas saw the windchill temperature even colder as the freezing winds pummelled exposed areas, particularly the high country and exposed coasts and headlands.

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