RECORD CITY RAINFALL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19825, 30 December 1938, Page 14

RECORD CITY RAINFALL

WETTEST FOR 49 YEARS 62.05 INCHES REGISTERED (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. With three days’ observations yet to go, the year 1938 at 9 o’clock yesterday morning established e the record of being the wettest year in the past 49 years of Wellington’s meteorological history. The station at which recordings have been made over the longest continuous period is Karori reservoir, where observations were begun in January, 1890. Up to and including the 9 aan. reading yesterday the total rainfall to date this year at Karori was 62.05 inches, as against the previous highest yearly total of 62.01 inches in 1928. Thus, with more rain yet expected this year, the rainfall record has been broken by .04 inches or, as a meteorological official put it, just a light shower over the record. Wellington has not been alone in having a year of abnormally heavy rainfall. Timaru has also already reported the heaviest rainfall since recordings were begun there 40 years ago. When the final figures of other centres are available, it is likely that records will go in a number of other instances. Official records of rainfall in Wellington over the past 80 years nave not always been taken at the same place and, as the rainfall varies materially according to the locality, exact comparisons with previous years are not easy. For this purpose figures of recordings at other sites have been corrected to correspond with the altitude and locality of the Dominion .vieteorological Office, Kelburn. On this basis the wettest year as at the Kelburn site was 1863 with 59.9 inches. Up till 9 a.m. this morning, the rainfall recording for the year at Kelburn was 58.13 inches, which is 1.77 inches below the. record. It is not now likely that the Kelburn record will be improved as 1.77 inches of rain in the next three days would require a phenomenally heavy fall.