By Emma Jolliff
Even the experts admit their forecasts were off the mark when it comes to our summer weather.
Severe weather warnings were issued for parts of the country again today, which saw flights cancelled in Queenstown, while wind plagued the capital, and Nelson received two awards for its recent weather extremes.
“We have had winds gusting already around Wellington up around 100kmh and the potential to see those gusts get to 120, there could even be the odd isolated gust to 140," says Metservice forecaster Dan Corbett.
In Queenstown, low cloud meant some aircraft could not fly.
“Trying to get home we thought the [bad] weather would be Wellington but it's actually here,” says Lisa Ngaia.
Mt Cook airport manager Dave Whitaker says their fleet couldn’t land in the bad weather.
“Air New Zealand has come to the rescue and put on a jet service which has the navigational equipment that can land and take off in conditions like we've got at the moment,” he says.
The lower South Island has welcomed rain after a dry month.
“We've seen 15, 20 as much as 40mls of rain, potentially more, from Southland towards parts of Otago,” says Mr Corbett.
And conditions were blustery on the day the award for ‘Sunshine Capital’ was returned to Nelson from Whakatane.
“It's been a long time gone, 12 months and we're not used to not having it for that long but it's good to have it back,” says Nelson Mayor, Aldo Miccio.
Nelson also has the dubious award of the highest rainfall in 50 years.
NIWA has admitted it got its summer forecast wrong, having predicted near-normal rainfall, not the record rain and flooding of last month.
And severe weather is still to come for the lower North Island tonight.
“The Wairarapa could also see some very strong to severe gales, they could see wind gust to 100 maybe 120,” says Mr Corbett.
He says the low will be winding down over the weekend, but not before delivering gales to Otago and more blustery showers to Southland.
But some made the most of the conditions today with a few children clearly enjoying the swells at Plimmerton.
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