DUNEDIN'S WEATHER

Evening Star, Issue 19025, 21 August 1925, Page 5

DUNEDIN'S WEATHER

DRIER THAN BIG HBRTHEHN TOWNS FACTS DISPROVE FALLAOT, Too often is Dunedin’s climate mid* represented, particularly in the north. Facts and figures, which speak fop themselves, show that those who decry our weather speak either from ignorance or from some ulterior motive, i Many of these critics call Dunedin a “ wot ” place, but the official records, for ns long as they have been taken in {be principal centres, show Dunedin’s rainfall to be greatly loss than other big fowns. Our mean temperature is lower (though not very much) than places in the north, hut from a health point of view none of them can excel ns. ~ Ono of those who is always spreading the gospel of Dunedin’s and Otago’s healthiness of climate and fine, bracing weather is Mr IV. B. Steel, the eneu'f getic secretary of the Otago Expansion] League. Recently a young man from] Dunedin who is teaching in a secondary school in an inland town in the North'-, Island wrote to Mr Steel stating that, he had been asked to lecture to tho people there on the attractions and aims of the Dunedin Exhibition, and asking Mr Steel for information. He, also mentioned that there was an ap-.i palling state of ignorance in the place' as to the climatic conditions in Otago,; many people considering it almost a\ Polar region. _ } Mr Steel’s reply was characteristically’' frank. “I am sending a few booklets; and facts to you,” be wrote, “ about the old province which may be of interest to the benighted heathen among whom you sojourn. Soak it into them that their clay-robed cow country is not Now Zealand.”

From the ' Official Year Book ’ the records for Auckland show that over a period of seventy years the mean rainfall per year was 43.85 in. and that rain fell on 182.9 days. Tlio figures for Wellington are available for a period of sixty-six years, and they give a mean rainfall per'year of 48.0'Jin, and show tliat rain fell on 160.8 days. The figures for Dunedin, taken over a period of sixty-seven years, give a mean fall of 36.85 in on 159.2 days. In view of the opening of the Dunedin Exhibition within three months the above facts are worthy of the widest publicity among our own folk aa well as people of other parts.