From afar and across the waters, we see images of snow, wind, rain, cold, rain, rain and more rain! Bollocks!
We are now well into the winter and yes, we have had rain, we have had wind and there is currently the heaviest snow in 20 years in the Canterbury district. Snow on the plains that are the setting for Christchurch. I suggest they are pretty cold, considering the power outage in many areas for going on two days now! But we are led to believe Wellington’s weather is so “crapola”, “Windy Wellington” they say! “It always rains in Wellington” they say!
Well I say! Crapola!
The air temperature is yet to dip below freezing! Even with the Southerly that has been breezing off the Canterbury snows only a couple of hundred kilometres away. While we have seen some heavy frosts the last two mornings, it simply proves we have had clear skies, after a rainy spell of, wait for it, one day! The air temperature is nowhere near as chill as a Highveld winter and compares more closely with Cape Town,
When it storms, it storms! The wind comes out of the south, biting, with grey skies that gives the city an eerie darkness that suggests home time, all day. These rants of winter remain short lived though, with spells lasting a day or two, followed by the frosts and clear skies. My sense is that, on average, we have two days of weather a week. Long may it last, until spring plucks up the courage to step up to the plate and provide us those beach days, tramping days, barbeque days.
For South Africans having lived on the Highveld and in the Cape “of storms” the transition has not been challenging. I can, however, understand a Durbanite or anybody who has grown up north of the tropic of Capricorn having issues with settling to this.
The Kiwi’s have also figured that being even slightly cold is plain stupid. They wrap up and wear gloves and scarves and beanies, when all that is needed is a jacket. So when you see them on TV, at venues on the North Island, wrapped in their “Puffer Jackets” (sleeping bags with sleeves) beenies, scarves and sporting gloves that would allow one to conquer Everest? It is bollocks!
Having said that, I believe if one were in Dunedin or Otago or Invercargill and you did not own that apparel, you would freeze to death.
My point? Do not fear the weather if you plan to visit the North Island and I cannot wait for the snows to arrive on the ranges around Wellington much like this
Though a picture I stumbled accross of Upper Hutt, a suburb north east of Wellington is not quite what I had in mind!
