Record low sunshine in the daylight savings months at Wellington

[Rwood]

We won't be the only ones, but ...

Wellington sun total for March (a month that was also cooler and wetter than average) was 156.5 hours, 38 below the long-term mean and 48 below the 1981-2010 average. Lowest since 1987. More drastic is the "inter-equinox" record - the total for October-March was only 1041 hours, the smallest value in 105 years of records at city sites. Previous low was 1070 hours in 1957-58 and 1992-93.

• Tweet

[Suezy]

That is dreadful Rupert - the worst for 105 years!!!
Will be interesting to get Chch too at some stage.

[Rwood]

I can give an estimate - about 1125 hours for Oct-March.

Average for 1981-2010 is 1271, so well below that.
Average 1949-2010 (Ch'ch Aero site) is less at 1220, still a significant but not huge drop.

Highest value was 1477 in 2002-03, lowest at that site was 1036 in 1952-53, similar to W'gton's new record low.

A tally of just 733 hours in 1936-37 at Waimate makes these numbers look quite good!

[ato2]

That is a depressing total for Wellington....

[Rwood]

Fortunately, it won't need much an effort for April to at last beat 1980 for Jan-April.

Perth had 329 hours of sunshine in March, it's 2nd highest total for that month.

[ato2]

By way of contrast with Wellington, the New Plymouth totals look reasonably good...I don't have the figures to hand but it was well over 200 hrs before I headed off to Auckland last week.