Tauranga was the warmest of the six main centres in October, despite recording the lowest October high temperature since records began in 1941.
Electric blankets were turned back on and fires lit as the big chill hit on October 5, when the maximum temperature recorded was 9.4C.
It was a similar story
in Te Puke, which also recorded its lowest October maximum temperature of 8.6C on the same day.
Heavy rain caused slips in Tauranga and a 30m-high acacia tree fell, blocking a road at Pongakawa.
In its climate summary for the month, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) said it was the coldest October in New Zealand in 64 years. The average temperature nationwide was 10.6C - 1.4C below average.
Such a cold October has occurred only four times in the past 100 years, the last time in 1945.
But despite the unusual cold snap, temperatures were near normal in Tauranga, while Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin had their coldest October on record.
The mean temperature in Tauranga was 13.5C - that's just 0.3C below the norm.
But if it felt like the umbrella got a hammering in October, it's because rainfall was well above average.
Tauranga recorded 152mm of rain - 170 per cent of the norm.
But sunshine hours remained near normal, with 214 hours of sun.
Nationwide, it was only fractionally warmer than August, which recorded a warmer-than-normal average temperature of 10.4C.
Niwa said October was shaped by a series of southerly fronts, all-time record low temperatures in many areas, and unseasonable late snowfalls.
The heaviest October snowfall since 1967 occurred in Hawke's Bay and the central North Island on October 4 and 5 stranding hundreds of travellers, closing roads, and resulting in heavy lambing losses.
Rainfall was near-record (more than twice the normal levels) in parts of Hawke's Bay, Gisborne and the Tararua district, and well above normal in the remaining east of the North Island, as well as Wellington, Marlborough and parts of Canterbury.
For those people pinning their hopes on a quick thaw, the institute is predicting that temperatures over the next three months to be near average for the North Island and top of the South Island, but below average elsewhere.
