Road trippers should prepare for some long delays this holiday. Photo / 123rf
The longer-lasting impact of the year of downpours will be felt as holidaymakers hit the tarmac.
The AA is warning that some of the roads subject to holiday backups over the summer will be even worse this year due to extensive repairs.
“The holiday roads are, for the most part, in a similar state to the rest of the network – they need a lot of work,” says AA policy director Martin Glynn.
“There is a big effort going into addressing the problem, but it’s been a very wet year, particularly in the North Island. And permanent repairs can only be done when the roads are dry, so there’s a huge catch-up job to do.”
Glynn says New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi is working hard to get jobs done that can be done before people head away on holiday and will also be stopping work on the biggest travelling days, but there’s simply so much to be done.
“From about mid-January, there’s a massive focus on the summer work season. NZTA has described it as their busiest ever. There’s a lot of resealing work planned to start then, so motorists are going to see a lot of roadworks out there.
“We’ve heard of about 2500 kilometres this summer alone, so people are going to need to be prepared to spend extra time on the roads.”
The necessity of dry weather doesn’t seem like a guarantee at the moment, given the recent weather we’ve had. This week, we again saw downpours and temperatures plunge into single digits across both the North and South Island.
So is there any sign of the weather finally warming up?
NIWA meteorologist Ben Noll says the El Niño we’re currently experiencing is cut from a different cloth.
“We’re seeing some key differences in the Pacific Ocean that weren’t there during El Niño episodes in the past, and this has meant that weather patterns in New Zealand have been a little different from what we typically expect in an El Niño spring and summer.”
But Noll says there is some good news on the horizon.
“Kiwis will soon be experiencing temperatures well into the 20s and perhaps the 30s during the weeks ahead as we get to that middle part of the summer season when we tend to experience our hottest conditions.
“It’s a matter of being a little patient. The weather is coming right, but it’s taking a little longer than we thought it would earlier in spring.”
While the weather is always chaotic and subject to change, the one constant we’ll likely experience in the coming months is relentless wind.
“We are expecting strong winds not just over summer, but potentially into autumn as well. By the middle part of 2024, we’ll be really sick of these strong wind episodes we’ve seen.”
This wind also means the weather will be more changeable over the coming months.
“You could have two or three days of really nice weather, but it’s then followed by a big southerly. That changes the complexion of your week and it turns things colder.”
So what will our Christmas weather offer up? And could entertainment events around the country be cancelled because of these conditions?
Listen to the full episode of The Front Page podcast to prepare for the festivities this year.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. It is presented by Damien Venuto, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in business reporting who joined the Herald in 2017.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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