New Zealand climate and weather

We have arranged the most interesting climate data into charts to give you an impression of what's expecting you in New Zealand. It shows the range of weather and climate in different parts of New Zealand, not including extreme places like Mount Cook or the Chatham Islands.

Temperature records are regularly broken, not for the country though but for individual towns.

Mean monthly sunshine hours

New Zealand record: most sunshine hours in one year - Nelson (1931): 2,711 hours.
New Zealand record: lowest sunshine hours in one year - Invercargill (1983): 1,333 hours.

Mean monthly rainfall (mm)

New Zealand record: highest amount of rainfall in a 24 hour period - Hokitika (21–22 January 1994): 682 mm.
New Zealand record: highest amount of rainfall in year - Hokitika (29 October 1997–29 October 1998): 18,442 mm.

Mean daily minimum air temperature (°C)

New Zealand record: lowest air temperature - Ophir, Otago (3 July 1995): –21.6 °C

Mean daily maximum air temperature (°C)

New Zealand record: highest air temperature - Rangiora, Canterbury (7 February 1973): 42.4 °C

(Source: NIWA Science, National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research)

Climate change is also a fact in New Zealand

• Periods of droughts are becoming increasingly common, with more droughts during the El Niño years than ever (which bring additional risks of forest fires). 2019/2020 was in many regions the second driest summer since 1937. The first 6 months of 2019 were the driest ever. Other severe droughts happened in 2010, 2013 and the summer of 2016/2017. There were only seven major droughts before that. These prolonged droughts make it harder for young vegetation and animals to survive, not just dairy farming takes a hit but native animals suffer as well, Kiwi for example start to roam for food in daytime and starve. Rural properties nowadays keep bigger water tanks than years ago.
• Temperatures are rising, for New Zealand 2016 was the hottest year ever, 2018 the 2nd hottest, 2019 the 4th hottest. According to Statistics NZ the long term sea level rise in Auckland was an average of 1.67 mm per year between 1899 and 2018, accelerated since 1961.
• Sea levels are rising. The number of days with king high tide levels have doubled compared to 1900, worsening coastal erosion and flooding. Higher peaks are expected during La Nina years and with further global warming.
• Other effects are likely to be more extreme weather events with record rainfall in short amounts of time - not only in connection with cyclones - and subsequent flooding and higher wind extremes. Winter 2022 was both the warmest and wettest ever recorded in New Zealand.

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