Now the Gisborne Harbour’s historical data has been added to the climate database maintained by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), and these date from 1878 to 1969.
The overlap with the MetService’s airport station indicates closely matching rainfall figures.
These records have nothing which comes close to the January-May rain total of 2023.
The next highest rainfall for the same period was recorded at the harbour in 1924, with a five-month total of 873.4mm.
They must have thought the rain would never end back then, as it poured from March through April and into May.
Those three months alone were drenched with 740mm.
Next in the historical list is 1911, with a total of 815.3mm for January to May’s end.
Back in 1883, the same period had 806.7mm, while in 1938 these five months recorded 805.6mm.
So, yes — the year’s rain total to now, and especially the first three months of the year, is unprecedented.
On the other hand, heavy rainfall is most certainly not uncommon along the East Coast from the Whareratas to East Cape and inland.
Cyclonic downpours and fierce storms make regular appearances in the historical records and there are accounts of some truly biblical floods in the newspapers of days gone by.
The harbour’s record-keeping marked an epic downpour of 512.1mm of rain over the single month of March in 1910. That beats this February’s Gisborne total of 450mm by quite a margin.
The 1910 rain and flood were the result of a sub-tropical cyclone, very like this year’s cyclones Hale and Gabrielle. There was widespread damage all over the North Island and the folk of this district were comparing it to other “Great Floods” of the past.
The Poverty Bay Herald referred to a local weather recorder, a Mr C H Ferris, who reported the total rainfall for the four-day storm was 17.27 inches, or over 438 millimetres.
He compared it to the almost 400mm which fell over three days in June 1894, and the 23 inches, or 584mm, recorded by Mr Woodbine Johnson at Wairakaia over January 1876 — the year of “the big flood”.
May 1879 was another wet month in memory, with 431mm making it the wettest single month on record for Gisborne, at that time.
A few years ago Sir Geoffrey Palmer described New Zealand as a “pluvial” country, meaning it had a good rainfall.
Gisborne residents in 1887 would certainly have agreed, after being drenched with 305mm over 23 days in May, and then having another 24 rain days in June dumping a further 303mm.
Nowadays, with rivers stopbanked, and drainage works having been done over the years, we have little idea just how devastating and frightening were the floods of earlier times.
Newspaper reports reveal the ferocity of storms which brought battering gale-force winds and torrential rain which caused creeks and rivers to rise with alarming swiftness.
Square miles of the Poverty Bay Flats have been under water many times in the past, with residents fleeing for their lives, and people having to be rescued by rowboat.
Each time one of these major weather events visited, the damage and loss was enormous. Crops and pasture were ruined, fences smashed down, homes flooded or washed away, thousands of stock drowned, and often there was human loss of life.
The raging floodwaters brought down timber of all sorts and sizes, and silt choked paddocks and wharves, making for a lengthy recovery without all the technical and machinery advances of today.
Only a few years after settlers arrived in the region, it was noted that heavy rains and floods seemed to occur about every four years. But then, science was just starting to learn about weather patterns such as the Southern Oscillation, El Nino and La Nina. The only warning they had was the “falling glass” of the barometer, and their own observations of change in the atmosphere.
The rebuilding of bridges and restoring rough roads after nasty weather was a constant of life in the days before the telephone, electricity and motorised machinery. People were much more aware of the threat of bad weather, of the need to be always on guard against the fury of the elements — and the need to work on improving the district’s defences.
Which brings us back to the question posed at the outset — has it really been wet?
Yes, most certainly it has, and it has matched the big events of the past.
Scientists worldwide and across the disciplines are now warning that extreme weather events are becoming more common —and they are increasing in intensity.
So the answer is, yes — it has been wet, and district council gauges show it has been wetter since June of last year than at any time in the past five years.
The real question is — what will we do in response to the changing weather outlook?
