Head south if you want a taste of summer

It’s official, this summer sucks.

Holidays were rained out and some parts of Northland, Coromandel and Hawke’s Bay were flooded after Cyclone Hale this month.

And there’s still no relief in sight, with the forecast predicting Aucklanders are not only set for a torrential anniversary weekend, but for another full week of it. Other parts of New Zealand will not escape the rain either.

Stuff has analysed weather station data from the first two months of summer over the past 20 years, comparing rainfall and wet days recorded by MetService and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa).

It shows for many, it’s been one of the wettest summers since the turn of the century for those in the north and east of the North Island.

In Northland and Hawke’s Bay it has been particularly rainy.

According to MetService, between the start of December and the end of January, Whanga¯rei recorded 491.6mm of rain – nearly 35mm more than the previous high of 457.4mm recorded at the same weather station in 1938.

Holiday hotspot Tauranga doubled its average rainfall of 172mm with 344.4mm over the same period.

Meanwhile, Whitianga has a claim for the Atlantis of New Zealand, clocking up nearly half a metre of rain (496.6mm). That’s nearly 100mm more than the previous high-water mark of 398mm in 2011.

Whitianga has also taken out the dubious top spot of having the most wet days, with 26 of 58 days recording at least 1mm of rain in a day. In comparison, in summer 2019-20, there were just six days of rain.

But the further south you go, the better the news has been for warm (and dry) weather.

Canterbury has clocked the hottest day so far this summer when the mercury hit 34.4C in late December.

And nearly every rain gauge Stuff looked at on the South Island was down on annual averages.

Invercargill has had less than a third of the rain it usually sees over January and February, racking up just 49mm of its 188mm average.

That’s the driest start to summer Invercargill has seen since records began in 1900. Likewise, Milford Sound recorded only 20 days of rain, its driest start to summer in over six decades.

Meanwhile, the weather station at Tiwai Point just outside Bluff only recorded 1mm of rain through the first 25 days of January.

At the heart of the terrible summer for the North Island are coolerthan-usual climate conditions caused by La Nin˜ a, which also brings a stronger easterly trade wind, MetService meteorologist Lewis Ferris said.

While La Nin˜ a wasn’t the sole cause of the rain, Ferris said, it did make wet weather more likely for those in the north as it brought in more low-pressure systems from the tropics. And the forecast for February was a ‘‘pretty similar situation’’, so heading south might be the best bet for anyone wanting a taste of Kiwi summer.