Winter was already here

Today, June 1, marks the start of winter in this part of the world, but the season didn’t wait for the calendar: The weather turned last week, and this weekend has seen all sorts of storms, including snow that stranded motorists in the South Island, and flooding elsewhere. And, now, the cold.

Weather doesn’t pay any attention to seasons, of course: We had a very mild, often summery autumn, until it changed this week. We had a lot of rain—it sometimes absolutely poured—for several days this week, just like in winter, and we had some extremely strong winds, as we often do with autumn storms. Then yesterday the temperatures started falling.

I was glad to not have to go anywhere or do anything the past couple days. I’d planned on going the grocery store Thursday, thought about waiting until yesterday, and went anyway. That was fortunate: The weather Friday was awful more often than not.

Today I waited for a break in the weather to take the rubbish and recycling out to their respective bins. I was surprised at how cold it was. It supposed to get even colder.

This year, winter started shortly before the season did. Now, it’s about to get more wintry. Yay.

The image above was posted to the Facebook Page of New Zealand’s Metservice, and shows the expected low temperatures around the country tomorrow, June 2. The numbers are degrees Celsius.