Horse owners all over New Zealand are not surprised by the NZ Met Service announcing that it has been the year when it hasn’t stopped raining!
So many places have received all their usual annual rainfall in the first nine months of the year. So many of those places are also favourite places to live for horse riders!
Those in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty have experienced record-breaking amounts of rain. For Hamilton, it was the highest tally for the first 9 months since records began in 1935.
Hamilton, Tauranga, Te Puke, Gisborne, Rotorua, Taupo, Paraparaumu, Christchurch and Ashburton have all received more rain so far in 2017 (in 9 months), than is typically received across an entire year.
Recent temperatures have swung widely between much warmer, and significantly colder.
On a brighter note, though, today is also the spring equinox which means days and nights are now of equal length, so after this weekend the days will start to get longer than the nights and this continues until the summer solstice (most amount of available sunshine) on December 22. You will probably even notice the days lengthening, as we generally gain an extra 20 minutes or so of extra sunlight every week in/around September.
