Is it unusually warm in Hawke's Bay?

A fine day for a visit to the playground and a swing for Maddie Schaffers, 2, at Havelock North. Photo / Warren Buckland

Those pondering the warm nights of May may also ponder that it's close to normal.

In Napier the average May high temperature is 17C and the average low 9C, but after a peak at 24.6C (23.8C at the airport) yesterday afternoon , it was 17.3deg at 1am today , according to MetService on-line figures, and dropped to an overnight low of 11.9C just before the 7.11am sunrise.

On May 17 last year the peak in the city was 20.1C, a week after a 27.8C peak which is now the record May temperature for Napier in modern recordings, and one of the highest nationwide in over 140 years.

But the night-time temperatures a year ago were generally about the 9C average.
Preceding last year's record May, Hawke's Bay was in drought in May 2020, and in May 2019 temperatures regularly passed through 20C. It was only in the last few days that rainfall entered double-figures for the month.

As it happens, May is the fifth-wettest month of the year in Hawke's Bay with an average of 54.2mm for Napier, surpassed by July (73.8mm), June 60.7mm, March (57.6mm) and April (57.4mm).

With heavy rain in February and March, figures are well up on average, but for May they are mainly about one-third of the month's average, with little forecast in the next 10 days.

A MetService meteorologist said over the last few days it been warmer and muggier through much of New Zealand in recent days on the back of a warm flow generated in the tropics. But while weather is expected to remain mainly fine, the peak in Napier-Hastings today was forecast to be about 22C, with an overnight low of 11C, dropping to temperatures about the May average at the weekend.