The Photo Gallery: The Letter C

These past hot months, of the most incredible summer New Zealand has seen in decades, has been intensely wonderful. We’ve enjoyed endless evenings of playing out till dark, and days with windows flung open to let air fill the house. We’ve not had to layer up in months, our skin has been free to breath, unrestricted from long sleeves and heavy materials. The washing has been put on on the line, every day of summer – without fail, to dry without a care. Long hair has dried in the air, with no need for electronic blow-drying to take off the chill of wet locks around the shoulders. Our feet have walked freely on sand and grass, free from confinement of socks and shoes.

But, all this pleasure has come at a great price.

New Zealand, otherwise know as ‘Aotearoa’ – translated this means ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’, has seen plentiful blue skies – but very little cloud. So, with this week’s ‘Photo Gallery’ being on the theme of ‘The Letter C’, I’m throwing in this photograph of what we’ve seen for the past few months – and it’s quite obvious what we’ve seen very little of (spot the white fluffy bits – there’s not been many of them around!).

The weather map over the entire country has frequently been dotted with nothing but ‘sunshine’ symbols.

Now, we see the consequence, and drought has been declared in vast areas of New Zealand. Wellington City is on track for its longest dry spell since 1947, when Kelburn’s rain gauge did not record any rain over 1 millimetre for 34 days. Wellington is to see a ban on any non-essential use of water outdoors from Saturday.