Extreme variations in Christchurch weather

Press, 2 January 1979, Page 4

Extreme variations in Christchurch weather

Changeable, extreme conditions marked Christchurch weather in 1978. Although both temparatures and sunshine hours were about normal over all, the year was wetter than

1977 and considerably wetter than average: 913 mm of rain fell last year compared with 833 mm in 1977, and the average of 660 mm. The year began with a summer which rated the best since 1957. It soon became a drought, lasting until midApril. February was the warmest and sunniest since the weather office began taking records in 1864 — only two days without sun, 245 hours of sunshine and no rain for 24 successive days. March had only three days of rain and the highest number of sunshine hours since March, 1945. April, while being the warmest on record since 1864, also had the wettest seven days and the longest period without sunshine on record. May continued cloudy with 10 successive days of rain, although the total rainfall for that month was onlv half the normal average. The winter months were cold, wet and dull with few frosts — although on June 10. Christchurch had its heaviest frost since 1946: 10.1 degrees was recorded at Christchurch Airport. Particularly heavy rain fell on July 8, 9 and 10 accompanied by strong north-east winds, but the first 20 days of August brought only one

day of rain. This period had warm, dry nor’westers. The end of August was cold and unsettled. September was colder than usual with double the normal rainfall and few frosts. October had heavy rain on the 20th and 21st with some local flooding during a hail storm, but in November, north-westerly winds brought dry sunny weather with temperatures above normal, especially in the days preceding the General Election. December was very changeable, 99m of rain falling between the 10th and the 14th, of which 36mm fell in a real downpour on the 12th, Sunshine figures, however, for the last month were almost exactly normal (203 hours) there being only one sunless day. The hottest day was December 30, with a maximum temperature of 27.3 deg C. The total rainfall for December was nearly three times above the average for that month; 154 mm was recorded at the airport, compared with an average of 58mm. The fastest wind gust in 1978, 51 knots, was recorded on July 11. There were four days of snow, six of hail, 33 of fog, and four of high winds.