All-pervading Waikato dampness

Yesterday we arrived back in Cambridge after a few days holiday in Auckland, being tourists. We sampled such delights as the unheated hotel swimming pool,  the complicated and expensive process of getting on a bus (basically having to find somewhere from which to buy a HOP card, for a non-refundable $10 a card), the completely […]

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Mucky rain

While the south of New Zealand has been struggling with too much rain in recent days, here in the north we are so very short of it (though Saturday’s forecast looks promising).  Basically, we have had almost none since Christmas. As someone who relies on rain to wash the car, this means my car is […]

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Where will cyclone Oma go?

Cyclone Oma has ground to a halt between Vanuatu and New Caledonia. That’s not to say the cyclone has fizzled out – rather I mean it’s not changing its location very fast. But that’s may be about to change. But where will it go now? I note that there is a large discrepancy between where […]

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Relative Velocity

Those of us who fly out of NZ reasonably frequently will have noticed how flight times differ significantly depending on whether one is travelling west to east or east to west. Take my recent flight to and from Perth, in Western Australia.  The Auckland to Perth flight was timetabled to last 7 hours 25 minutes, […]

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Weather records

I came across the following on the BBC website  "Australia's summer broke 205 records…" It draws from the recent Climate Council report. The BBC article doesn't list them all 205 of them, but does pull out the most impressive – the hottest summer on record for Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra,  and the wettest on record […]

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The Perth climate

A quick glance at some climate statistics will tell you that Perth in February is hot, sunny and dry. The mean maximum temperature is 31.7 C for Perth city, with a mean of  7 days going above 35 Celsius, and 1 day going above 40  Celsius. February rainfall is impressive, by its absence.  The mean […]

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Tip or slide?

We had our departmental Christmas lunch on Tuesday, outside in the campus grounds. We had some lovely sunshine, but the wind did rather spoil things. I've certainly got used now to living in a very wind-free place – a fresh breeze is something quite unsual here. We were hanging on to our paper plates, but […]

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Weather and statistics

I overheard the following conversation at the best coffee outlet on campus yesterday: "Well, winter's nearly over. We're past the shortest day so it's getting warmer. And we've had eleven frosts so far this year, and the record for Hamilton is twelve, so there can only be one more to come." – Anonymous Where do […]

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