A warm year for Blenheim, but not quite sunny enough
A warm 2017 in Blenheim was capped off with the hottest December in 48 years.
Despite the warm weather, Blenheim finished runner-up to Richmond for the crown of sunniest town in New Zealand.
Data from Plant & Food Research showed the mean temperature in Blenheim was above average for 11 months in 2017 and the only month that recorded a below average mean temperature was May.
December 17 was the hottest day of the year, when the temperature reached 31.3 degrees Celsius and the coldest day of the year was July 31 when the temperature dipped to minus 2C.
Plant & Food scientist Rob Agnew said ocean temperatures were one of the reasons behind the warm year.
‘‘A few weeks ago there were a few publications that showed how hot the oceans were around New Zealand, so that’s where the warmth and the instability in the weather pattern comes from.
‘‘But December was pretty warm apart from the last three days basically when we had three fairly cool nights but the rest of the nights were well above average,’’ Agnew said.
Ground frosts were well below the long-term average, with Blen- heim recording 39, 13 less than the long-term average of 52. ‘‘Our winters are a lot warmer now than say they were 50 years ago,’’ Agnew said.
The year was also sunny, with Blenheim registering 2604.5 hours of sunshine, near the long-term average of 2462 hours. ‘‘It was not quite enough unfortunately. It was a very sunny year but not quite good enough to beat Richmond,’’ Agnew said.
Blenheim received 591.4mm of rain in 2017, only 0.2mm more than 2016 and near the long-term average of 639.7mm.
‘‘There are quite a few months there that had well below average rainfall like January, June, October, November and December,’’ Agnew said.