Sun despite record rain

Despite record-breaking rainfall in July, not many places across the motu have been far off from their average sunshine hours so far this winter.

MetService meteorologist Tui McInnes said the sunshine figures were ‘‘pretty average’’ for the month of July. ‘‘A few sunny days have really boosted the numbers up, rather than it being mostly cloudy every single day,’’ he said.

Dunedin has had the least amount of sunshine so far this winter when looking at numbers across June and last month, with a total of 164.4 hours. While it was Aotearoa’s fourth-warmest July, five separate weather events brought flooding rain and the culmination of the frequent rain events saw 20 locations experience the wettest July on record, while another 25 tallied near-records.

Christchurch broke records for the wettest July on record since 1971, with 310mm of rain – about half of its typical rainfall in a year.

It was also the first time recording over 300mm in a month since records began in 1863, according to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa).

Total sunshine hours were close to the average for June and July.