Winter is meant to be settling in, yet the start of June has felt more like the tail end of summer for much of New Zealand. Wellington led the way, with the capital recording temperatures that knocked over a heat record that had stood since before the moon landings were a memory, and the warmth stretched from Northland all the way down to Southland.
The mercury reached 19.9 degrees in Wellington on the Monday and 19.8 degrees on the Tuesday, according to RNZ. Those readings broke the previous June maximum for the capital by more than a degree and a half. The old marks of 18.3 degrees at the airport and 18.5 degrees in Kelburn had been on the books since 1971, which makes this a 55-year-old record finally toppled.
To put that in perspective, the average daily high for Wellington in June usually sits somewhere around 12 to 13 degrees. Pushing close to 20 degrees is the sort of thing the city would normally expect in autumn, not the first week of winter. MetService meteorologist Lewis Ferris told RNZ that the figures were well out of season, saying that to see an average daily temperature around that 19 to 20 degree mark, forecasters would more likely be looking at March.
The warmth was not confined to the capital. Ferris said the run of mild days reached from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island, with Northland, Auckland and points all the way to Southland sitting well above their usual June averages. A good deal of that warmth showed up overnight rather than at midday. Cloudy skies acted like a blanket, holding in the heat that would normally escape after dark, while very warm air was being dragged down the country from the north.
That northerly flow is the key to the whole pattern. When air arrives from the tropics rather than off the Southern Ocean, it brings its mildness with it, and a thick layer of cloud stops nights from cooling off the way clear winter skies allow. The result is a stretch of days and nights that feel weeks out of place on the calendar.
The obvious question is whether climate change is to blame, and Ferris was careful not to overstate the link. He told RNZ the records could not be wholly attributed to a warming climate, because individual hot days are driven by the weather of the moment. What he did say is that a warmer background climate lowers the barrier for records to be broken, with global average temperatures creeping up year on year. In other words, the weather still has to line up for a record day, but each passing year makes the bar a little easier to clear.
For most people the warm spell has been a pleasant surprise rather than a worry. Lighter power bills, fewer frosts on the windscreen and a few extra days outdoors are not a bad way to ease into the cold season. There are quieter consequences though. A mild start to winter can confuse plants into early growth, leave less snow building on the ranges for the ski season and the rivers that depend on the melt, and give pests and diseases an easier ride through what should be their lean months. Skifields in particular tend to watch a warm, wet northerly pattern nervously, because it can fall as rain rather than snow on the slopes.
The warmth has not been the only weather story. The same northerly setup that delivered the mild air also carried plenty of moisture, and forecasters have been watching the western and central North Island closely. MetService flagged a high chance that a heavy rain warning would be needed for Taranaki north of Eltham, with lower confidence of heavy falls reaching from southern Waikato down to Taihape, across the Tararua Range and into the eastern Bay of Plenty and the far north of Tairawhiti. You can keep an eye on the current picture through the MetService severe weather outlook.
The mild run is not built to last. A showery southwest change has been forecast to push north over the country, which is the more familiar face of a New Zealand winter. When that southerly arrives it drags colder air up from the south and trims those overnight temperatures back towards where the calendar says they should be. For anyone who enjoyed the unseasonable warmth, the advice is the usual one for this country, which is to make the most of it while it lasts and keep a jersey handy.
Records like Wellington’s are worth noting not because a single warm week tells us much on its own, but because they are arriving more often. A mark that held for 55 years has now been beaten, and the people whose job it is to track the weather are saying the line that separates a normal winter day from a record-breaking one is slowly shifting. You can follow the latest forecasts and any new warnings on the MetService national page.
Did you notice the warm start to winter where you live, and are you sorry to see the southerly on its way back? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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