Whitianga farmer Rob Christensen herds his cattle along a flooded road. July's storms rocked the country. Photo / Sarah Ivey
Whitianga farmer Rob Christensen herds his cattle along a flooded road. July's storms rocked the country. Photo / Sarah Ivey
KEY POINTS:
Forget drownings, plane crashes, the Olympic Games and even the election - nothing stirs a Kiwi's blood like a juicy bad-weather story.
Every fortnight since July 2003, UMR Research has asked New Zealanders to rate how closely they followed the main stories covered by the media.
Almost 500news stories have been ranked over that time in the telephone poll of a nationally representative sample of New Zealanders aged 18 years and over. The most followed news story has been torrential rain and floods in February 2004.
Heavy rain produced the most disastrous floods in the Wanganui, Manawatu and Rangitikei region for many decades, as well as flooding in southern Hawkes Bay, Wairarapa, Lower Hutt and Picton.
Over the past four years, that remained the story New Zealanders were most interested in with 85 per cent telling UMR they were interested or very interested in it.
The London terrorist bombings of July 2005 were second (84 per cent); Boxing Day tsunami (83 per cent); then the search for Featherston girl Coral Burrows, who was murdered (82 per cent).
Five of the 10 most closely followed news stories since 2003 took place in 2008, with the death of perhaps the best-known New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary, failing to make the list.
Once again, weather dominated with the storms of July the No 1 news story of the year.
