Hot time in the big city

Auckland may not have had the most sun but it was the warmest of the five main centres last year.

The city's mean temperature was 15C, at least 1.7C warmer than Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch or Dunedin.

In its peak Auckland soared to 27.5C, though that was not enough to beat Dunedin, which scored the year's single highest main-centre temperature, 34.6C.

Those findings come from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), which this week released its climate summary for last year.

The five centres generally received more rain and less sun than they did in 2003, but Auckland was the exception, with 14mm less rain and 19 hours of extra sun.
However, Auckland was 0.7C degrees cooler than in 2003.

Of the five centres Christchurch was the place to be, with the most sun and least rain. The city got slightly more sunshine than Auckland, and less than half the rain, but it was cooler. The mean temperature was 11.2C.

Dunedin was the coolest of the main centres and had the least sun.

While predicting this year's weather may be difficult, all the main centres looked good yesterday.

Hamilton reached 23C, Auckland and Wellington hit 21C, Christchurch residents enjoyed 17C and Dunedin made 15C.