A record year of weather – the numbers are in

1News weather presenter Erin Conroy has been looking at the data from a memorable year of weather.

It kicked in early with the Auckland floods in January and Cyclone Gabrielle, which pummelled the East Coast of the North Island in February. But what do the totals to date look like?

We looked at what’s called Bright Sunshine hours – those clear blue sky days – and with a few days remaining in the year some spots were particularly lacking.

If you live in North Auckland and are feeling a little more gloomy this year, this may be why - readings from the Albany station show you received 549 fewer sunshine hours than normal. You were robbed of 30% of your normal sun.

Others in the list of grey spots this year are:

Wairarapa - down 393 hours

Central Hawke’s Bay - down 356 hours

Northland and the Tararua District - both down around 200 hours

On a sunnier note, and bearing in mind the final weeks were still to be tallied as we compiled this, the sunniest spots this year are looking like:

Wider Nelson - 2432 hours of sunshine

Mackenzie Basin - 2394 hours

Tasman - 2356 hours

Taranaki - 2326 hours

We took a look at the stats as we near the end of the year and the some of the rainfall totals are astonishing.

Many spots - dozens of them - exceeded their expected annual rainfall totals. But at least 10 places saw one-and-a-half times their annual amounts.

These are places like Napier, badly hit by cyclone Gabrielle, and also Whangārei, Auckland’s North Shore, Tauranga and, in the South Island, Kaikōura.

But two spots stand out. Comparing what we’d normally see to the end of November, both Gisborne and Kaikohe have seen more than double the rain they’d normally receive.

These statistics are being carefully analysed and final figures will be published at the end of the year, but it’s safe to say some North Island spots will have had their wettest year on record.

Also, if we look specific rain events Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland floods of course stand out. On January 27, Auckland saw it’s wettest day on record with 280mm of rainfall - an entire summer’s worth of rain in a day. And most of that in just 6 hours, with 73mm falling between 7 and 8 pm alone. That’s a whole month’s worth of rain in just an hour. Extraordinary stuff.

All of this contributed to a January that saw Auckland reach nearly half (45%) of its annual total in just one month. This will be one event for the history books.

The coldest temperature was minus 10.6C at Tara Hills near Omarama on June 10.

The warmest - so far - was back in February when Middlemarch in Otago reached a scorching 35.6C.

Three places saw slightly lower than average temperatures - Masterton, Tarapounamu in Bay of Plenty and Mahanga, near Wairoa.

Plenty of spots tracked above average - including Greymouth, which was 1.8C above average for the year.