Clear skies to last the weekend

There’s been more sun in the past week in Taranaki than there was for the whole month of July, which has made for brilliant sunrises and sunsets in recent days.

This included Thursday morning when pastel pink hues lit up the sky as a huge moon set.

With the latest run of fine, but cold, weather you could be forgiven for forgetting about just how bad last month was.

The Taranaki Region Council’s monthly climate data shows there were just four days without rain at the Brooklands Zoo site in New Plymouth last month.

However, the greyest place in the region was the site at Kahui Hut, on Taranaki Maunga, which had just three days without rain. Even the sunniest place in July, which was Pātea, saw just 11 days without rain.

Alongside the lack of sunshine was higher than normal rainfall across all sites in the Taranaki. Pātea had 133% of normal rainfall for the month while the Dawson Falls site on Taranaki Maunga had 296.4%, recording 1418.5 millimetres of rain in July.

Despite the intense rain last month, only two sites in Taranaki have recorded higher than normal rainfall in the year to date, with most sitting at between 60 and 90% of normal.

The run of fine weather is expected to come to an end next week, so enjoy the sunshine this weekend. MetService’s extended forecast is predicting rain to set in on Tuesday and last for the remainder of next week.