Less sun but more heat: Gisborne's January weather defies predictions

Storm clouds gathered over the city on January 5, contributing to weather figures for the month which show a shortfall of 40 sunshine hours compared with the 30-year average. Picture by Liam Clayton

District still carrying a moisture deficit

Gisborne’s weather for January has once again been contrary to predictions.

The month ended on a wet note, with 40 millimetres over the last two days, which made January wetter than usual.

The total for the month was a little over 92mm — one-third more than the 30-year average (1991-2020) of 65.6mm.

Despite the rain, January was actually in a moisture deficit for most of the month, reaching a deficit of 112mm on the 28th.

This was the carry-over  from a dry December.

The wind pattern shows the weather continued to be delivered from the sub-tropics, with northerly and easterly winds dominating.

There were eight days of winds from the north, four from the north-east and east and eight from the south-east.

With the blanketing effect of the rain and cloud, January’s expected sunniness took a hit.

Gisborne’s 30-year average for sunlight hours is just under 260 hours.  But the first month of 2024 fell short of that by around 40 hours.

The plus side of the rain and cloud is that it kept temperatures up, with nights averaging around 15.6 degrees, or almost 1.5 degrees warmer than usual.

Daytime temperatures were about half a degree warmer than the 30-year average at a little over 25 degrees.

Meanwhile, despite the continued talk of El Niño, the present conditions on the East Coast give no indication that it has arrived.

El Niños are expected to bring cooler, droughty weather to this district, but so far all the monitoring shows the warming trend continues and the region’s soils are still wetter than the norm for this time of year.