NIWA summary for April 2012

[Rwood]

Here's what really happened (for NZ as a whole, 0.3C warmer than average - significantly warmer days, cooler than average nights)

http://www.niwa.co.nz/climate/summaries/monthly/climate-summary-for-april-2012

There were some noteworthy sunshine totals and local records - among these were the following, with possible caveats noted in some cases:

Nelson 247.6 - highest April value recorded in NZ among "reliable" records (there is a higher reading from an older Nelson site in the 1910s which does not look credible).

Tekapo 244.9 - the current site has better exposure than previous ones. An older reading of 229 hours in 1960 is about equally meritorious, allowing for the lower possible total.

New Plymouth 230.8 - this is from a near-new electronic instrument. These generally read a bit higher than manual ones - not clear in this case yet. 228 hours in April 1988 may turn out be just as good.

Dunedin 184.1 - the electronic records from there are definitely higher than the old manual ones, so a value of 178 in 1952 is probably just as good.

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[David]

Thanks RWood for your comments on the report. I notice that that suspicious 25.9 reading for Auckland made it into the NIWA report... I for one believe that reading is an error

[Rwood]

If it makes it into the final statistics summary (will be out in a few weeks), you could consider emailing NIWA requesting a check, though probably there will be nobody then able to verify anything. It is regrettable, as an example, that a spurious reading of over 40C (!) turned up for Kaikohe a couple of Januaries ago. More data to be processed, and relatively fewer staff in MetService and NIWA, mean that this sort of thing can happen more readily these days.