Don’t blame us: Sunny skies, or storm clouds gathering? Whatever nature throws at us, it’s not the fault of the weather presenters.

Sunny skies or storm clouds gathering? Whatever the weather, don’t shoot the messenger, TVNZ weather presenter Renee Wright tells Kerry Harvey.

“You can walk into a room and very quickly become the most unpopular person in the room, especially if you promised glorious sunshine and it’s raining.” – Renee Wright

Summer weather is a hot topic and no one knows that better than Renee Wright. While many fellow Kiwis are on holiday, the One News weather presenter opts to stay in Auckland so she can share weather presenting duties with Dan Corbett.

“A lot of people leave Auckland over the holiday period so it’s quite quiet,” Renee says. “You can whip in and out to work and it’s not too bad. Sometimes you can even get a park outside your favourite cafe.

“We’re so lucky in Auckland. We’ve got some beautiful beaches, so it’s not a bad place to be over summer.”

Renee has presented the weather for more than a decade now and her three children – Leo, five, Gigi, three, and nine-month-old Arabella – are used to watching their mum on screen as they prepare for bed.

“Leo has the love code. If he sees me open and close my hands like in a prayer pose he takes that as my code to say I love him,” says Renee.

“Mum’s got photos of him doing it. They often do that for me because I’m not quite home by the time they go to bed.”

Instead, Renee is in the studio telling viewers what they can expect weather-wise for the days to come.

A challenging job at the best of times, it becomes even tougher in summer when people expect balmy days and endless sunshine.

“With our location, we do get a lot of weather and Kiwis are very passionate about their weather,” admits Renee, who is no stranger to being held personally responsible for what Mother Nature dishes out.

“You can walk into a room and very quickly

become the most unpopular person in the room, especially if you promised glorious sunshine and it’s raining.”

After 10 years in the job, Renee has honed her diplomacy skills.

“You can’t please everyone all of the time. It’s like, ‘Yay, we’ve got sunshine for the holiday makers’ and then when it’s raining, ‘Yay, the farmers are happy’,” she says.

“People will often come up to you and ask, ‘Can you tell me what’s happening four days from now?’ and you’re like well, ‘First of all, whereabouts?’.

“People just think you’ve got all of the weather right there for their specific part of New Zealand – temperatures, wind speeds, all of that.

“They can surprise you and it can be anywhere from in a cafe to on a bus, wherever.”

Then there are those who dispute the daily temperatures.

“We constantly get that. They’ll say, ‘Well, it’s 55 degrees by my oven in the kitchen and you guys said it was this’. But there is a criteria for where MetService take the measurements on the highs of the day and that’s what we follow,” Renee says.

Renee is not a meteorologist, but she is a keen student of the science and says there is a lot more to the job than just standing in front of a weather map for a few minutes.

“I think that sometimes people might assume that we just show up and read the weather and it doesn’t work like that,” she says, adding that she can be a little obsessive about what is happening outside.

“It is always in the back of your mind, like, ‘Showers should be coming through now. Where are they?’ ”

Not only do the presenters deliver the forecast, they also write their scripts and prepare the graphics.

“We meet with the MetService every morning and they talk about what they think is going to happen,” says Renee.

“If anyone disagrees they have to argue their point as to why they think it’s going to work like that.

“It’s not just closing our eyes and hoping for the best.”