The clouds’ silver lining

Winter is not my favourite season, and while I don’t think I’ve mentioned that before, it’s definitely true. Now that we’re in the middle month of our winter, I can reconfirm my dislike of the season. Winter in this part of the country is often cold and rainy, and it seems this year it’s even more true than usual—maybe?

Last week, I wrote about the weather and how I’d felt yucky feeling, and I also mentioned that I’d found out that it had rained less in May than it seemed. Well, MetService reported that June was different in a couple significant ways.

June and July are the coldest months of the year (though very cold days can happen before or after those months), and the high temperatures in June were aligned with historic trends, however, the low was colder than normal. It also rained a LOT in June: The total for June was 192.2mm (approximately 7.57 inches), as compared to the historic average of 128mm (approximately 5.04 inches)—though in June last year the total was only 79.4mm (approximately 3.13 inches). So, basically, it rained a lot in Hamilton June.

Other parts of New Zealand, especially Auckland and Northland and also the top of the South Island, were hammered with rain. So, sure, it rained a lot in Kirikiriroa-Hamilton in June, but it was much worse in other parts of New Zealand. And yet, even that wasn’t as bad as it wounds.

As result of regular rain since April, New Zealand’s hydro lakes are at unusually high levels, and that means that we won’t have any rolling blackouts this winter, like when we had an unannounced rolling blackout on the coldest night of 2021.

The issue is that when winter begins, the lakes behind the dams are usually low due to low-to-no summer rains, and when the weather turns particularly cold, power use goes up, and if the hyrdo lakes are low, then we can face rolling blackouts as a “last resort.” We were threatened with the possibility of rolling blackouts several times after that infamous 2021 night, but none actually happened. It seems pretty clear it won’t happen this year, and the big storms we’ve had this winter have made sure of that.

So, all the rain we’ve had this year has had a genuine silver lining. There had to be something good about it. But I still hate winter. Have I even mentioned that?