Weathering the Storm

Feels like just yesterday it was Christmas and now summer’s back. Hurray summer’s here and time to break out the BBQ and dust of the jandals? Yeah, nah. It’s going to rain for 10 days.

MetService has reported thunderstorms today, rain tomorrow, and rain until the end of time. Not quite the end of time, maybe some sun tomorrow. A bit of sun and then it’s raining again. Forever. Some weather outlets have gone a little bit optimistic and are suggesting some sun between the storms. I’ll pick that one. If only it was that easy. Maybe if we all think really hard about it we can will some decent weather for the weekend. Is it too much to ask? Haven’t we earned it? Tell them they’re dreaming. 

And for once it’s not just Auckland that’s getting a little damp. Wellingtonians, perhaps feeling a little smug because of the beautiful day they had on Sunday 11 November, can go jump in the same puddle: it’ll be raining in Wellington for 10 days as well. You could fly to Christchurch tomorrow if you’d like to see a clear sky. But I wouldn’t bother because thereafter it’ll be raining here, there and everywhere. For 10 days.

Except it won’t really. Well, it will, but not entirely. Maybe. One so-called-expert noted this to put our collective  minds at ease.

“When you have to do a weather forecast, you can only choose one icon to represent the entire day. We know almost every day there’s going to be a big downpour or period of rain but we don’t know how long it’ll linger for. So even though it looks like it’ll rain nonstop, you might find some of that will fall overnight and then you wake up and the sun’s out and most of the day is dry.”

Sounds like something a politician would say.

“This low is so large that it’s also got large areas of dry, sunny weather in the middle of it.”

But every cloud has a silver lining. 

“The farming community are over the moon about the rain coming in for Auckland because it’s drier than normal at the moment. A lot of gardeners and growers desperately want this rain. We want that because if they’re too dry before we go into summer, that lifts the prices of all the fruit and vegetables we buy locally.”

Complain now about the rain or complain later about the price of strawberries? Why not both? Why be reasonable about a bit of rain when there’s nothing better than complaining about normal weather? I assert my right as a Brit to complain about the weather, even though I know it’s much better than I would normally associate with this time of the year. After all we’re not happy unless we’re complaining about something. This will be every Aucklander on Sunday when they wake up to the pitter patter of pesky rain.

But from experience I know it’s only the weather forecast and not the weather. Yes, it may be a little damp, but it will be warm and when those pesky clouds do break you’d better watch out. The rain will have washed off the sun block and those rays are just looking for a friendly face to grill. Or they could just be wrong. Maybe that rain isn’t going to arrive and it’s all balderdash? On recent evidence that certainly seems to be the case. More sunny with cloudy intervals than rain with occasional sunshine. Whatever it is, I’m going to make the most of it. As a t-shirt I saw in a shop in Keswick wisely noted, I’d rather spend a wet day outside than a nice day in the office. I’ll drink to that. Cheers!