There’d been five days when the sun didn’t appear at all over Tāmaki Makaurau - and another 18 days where Aucklanders saw fewer than five hours of it.
“From a holidaymaker’s perspective, the weather around the upper North Island this month has been horrendous, compared with what we’d get normally... it’s hard to get much worse.”
By comparison, Wellington has received an average eight hours of sunshine each day over January.
Noll said the month had proven a “harsh turn” for Auckland, which began summer with a December that brought nearly 224 sunshine hours – more than it’d typically receive over that month.
“We’re not starting 2023 on a bright and cheery note,” he said, adding that the region hadn’t seen the last of warm and wet conditions that La Niña has helped deliver.
It’s also been Auckland’s wettest month ever, with rainfall levels sitting at a whopping 769 per cent of normal as at Monday – or nearly 40 per cent of its annual average – on the back of Friday’s record-breaking deluge.
As well, it’s been hellishly muggy in the city, with humidity values typically sitting higher than 80 per cent.
An obvious culprit for the gloomy conditions was La Niña - an ocean-driven climate system that’s traditionally brought cloud and rain, but also plenty of warmth, to the northeastern regions.
“We’ve basically had the Southwest Pacific Convergence Zone [a persistent band of cloudiness and storms] leaning on the northern regions of the country, which is something that very rarely happens,” Noll said.
“So, it’s been La Niña going full-bore.”
For Aucklanders, the good news was that, after three years in the driver’s seat of New Zealand’s climate, La Niña was finally set to fade out over coming months – likely making way for its counterpart, El Niño, later in 2023.
The bad news was its influence wouldn’t disappear quickly: Niwa’s January-to-March outlook picked plenty of potential for sub-tropical low-pressure systems to visit the upper North Island over the period.
Its outlook for February to April was due out this week.
