Thankful NZ's weather not so extreme

Photo / Brett Phibbs

Right across the globe the weather is dominating the headlines and I believe that we are now looking at close to 200 million people being directly affected by the flooding in Asia, the flooding in Europe and the wildfires across Europe/Russia.

All over the northern hemisphere severe weather is killing hundreds and displacing millions.

In China alone flooding has affected 110 million people... now we are hearing reports of up to 40 million being affected by the flooding in India and Pakistan.

Meanwhile hundreds of wildfires are roaring across Russia. CNN were reporting over 500 wildfires.

Now there have been deaths related to flooding in Europe and more wildfires in Portugal. Wildfire have also been affecting the state of California.

Here in New Zealand we have been lucky with our weather this year, it's been pretty quiet. Apart from the flooding which has affected some in Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hawkes Bay, Canterbury and north Otago our winter and autumn have been pretty tame.

Over the weekend snow did fall in Canterbury - but it was a hardly a newsmaker with most main centres seeing none of it. Conditions just weren't cold enough to produce snow in places like Christchurch or Dunedin.

There's absolutely the chance of a cold snap still doing that this winter, but really conditions around New Zealand are being created more and more at the moment to westerlies which tend to bring wetter, cooler, weather to the west and warmer, drier and windier weather to the east.

When you look at these terrible weather disasters around the world I find it hard not to feel thankful that I live in a country that still has some "good" extreme weather, but rarely at a level that causes widespread devastation.

New Zealand has escaped some major storms over the past couple of decades. We've certainly been hit by a few too, such as Cyclones Fergus and Drena back in the 96/97 summer and of course the terrible flooding in Manawatu in 2004 and the big Canterbury snow fall of 2006.

But on an international scale our weather barely even registers. I know this because WeatherWatch.co.nz has a good relationship with CNN International... and we send them press releases when the weather in New Zealand, and the South Pacific, becomes interesting on a global scale.

But since the creation of this friendship with CNN back in October last year I can count on one hand the number of press releases I have sent them. From what I can tell, only the tsunami from Chile actually made the headlines with a couple of fantastic photos sent in by WeatherWatch.co.nz reader CH Davis from Northland. The images showed swirling brown currents of sea water pouring into a blue and perfectly still Northland beach.

Our weather just doesn't make the headlines very often. We're quite similar to the UK. England is much smaller than NZ but has a population that is over 10 times bigger... yet even they struggle to make the headlines. As someone who loves the weather, I am secretly jealous of places like America that gets a taste of all the weather extremes... but when you read the Herald and see a list of nations currently being devastated by flooding and wildfire, you can't help but think thank god I live on a relatively small isolated island in the South Pacific.

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