Crummy Summers I Have Known...

[hbweather]

Well, I've just done some research through my station data, and our 2011-2012 "summer" wasn't - most surprisingly - the dullest I've recorded. That dubious honour fell to the un-summer of 2003-2004, which boasted a meagre 505.6hrs of sunshine. By comparison, 2011-2012 recorded 554.3hrs. To bring this into proportion, the NIWA 40yr sunshine mean for the 3 months is 674.3hrs.

However, as far as dismal months are concerned, Feb 2012 was a record-breaker, with the lowest sunshine hours in 10 years. We recorded a gloomy 112.5hrs, just 56% of normal. No wonder my December suntan has vanished...sigh!  :-[

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[Rwood]

Those numbers you're quoting are much lower than for Napier (e.g. 2003-4 value for Napier was 660). Any explanation - limited exposure perhaps??

Although W'gton has had its cloudiest summer in 105 years of data (!!!), on my rating system the summer overall (rain, temps, sun) comes in slightly ahead of 2003-04, which had the worst Februiary ever with 5-6 times the average rainfall and equal record low sunshine, preceded by a very ordinary January and quite reasonable December.

[David]

I haven't been round long enough to observe many summers, but this one really stood out with the Auckland sun total only 479 hours. I remember Dec 2004 had cold spells with hail & thunder at times. Dec 2006 also stands out in my mind and from memory the cool temps continued into the start of January.

At least we can look forward to next summer knowing there is a very good chance it will be better than this one 

[hbweather]

Yes Rupert, my sunshine recorder exposure wasn't great during that 2003/4 summer. Where do you source Napier sunshine figures? I'd be interested to do some more comparisons.

[Rwood]

Hi George,

I get them from NIWA's CliFlo database. Can save you the trouble for data up to end-2010 by emailing it if you like. I also have provisonal rounded totals for 2011 (I always allow about a year for later updates or corrections to come in, though that happens less often in these days of automation).

[Rwood]

Although we had our cloudiest summer, on checking the scores my rating system will make it slightly better here than 2001/02 and 2003/04. The difference is that those very poor summers followed good years, especially 2003. This time we had a rather inferior year or so beforehand, and so probably felt more cheated of an improvement.

[hbweather]

Having now compared my figures to the NIWA Napier figures (thanks, Rupert), my sunshine recordings for 2003/4 were definitely on the low side, probably due to poor westerly exposure.... The NIWA figure for that summer was 659.9hrs. However, when I analysed the NIWA figures for 2002 - 2010 summers, 2003/4 still came out the gloomiest for that 8 year period. It'll be very interesting to see how this summer's sunshine totals turn out, especially those for Feb!

[Rwood]

I can give you provisional for Napier for Jan - 269 hours. Feb. will be in later - manual sites take longer to send in their data, understandably.

A PS re record low W'gton tally - the 3 months closest to astronomical summer (longest days) are of course Nov-Jan. The record low for that period is 522 hours in 1922-23. That is significantly worse than the record low summer tally, with more recordable hours pther things being equal, but there are notes suggesting the instrument exposure was not all that great at times in the pre-Kelburn era (Kelburn 1928 onwards), so that may not be much consolation.