http://www.climate-uk.com/

Average temperatures near normal after 30 days.

Dead right gabba. I can also recall a former Met. forecaster getting nostalgic about summer days in South Canterbury - not to mention all those little stories that appear in newspapers around this time of year, remembering past summers - invariably warm and sunny.

A little known fact about lowland South Canterbury and North Otago is the relative cloudiness of summer (and especially December) by comparison with other seasons, especially winter (!). Records from Timaru, Oamaru and Waimate show this quite clearly, though the differences reduce somewhat after about 1960.

Waimate was particularly notorious for low December and summer totals, especially before 1960, with a mean of only 139 hours for December for 1935-1960 (this increased to 155 for the entire record 1934-1976, still only about 34-35% of possible compared with June's 50%). In December 1959 its NZ record-breaking low was just 60.4 hours, a tad over 13% of possible and the lowest value for a monthly % value for anywhere in NZ outside of June (and even for June the lower handful are doubtful readings).

A modest improvement in readings at Waimate in its last 15 years of record has not been explained.