The Country 14/02/25: Chris Brandolino talks to Jamie Mackay

NIWA Weather Guy on the Big Dry.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back to the country. Wrapping up with Chris Brandolino
from me. This is his go to Valentine's Day song,
the weather Girls, It's raining men. Just before we go
to Chris, a message from our partners at Farmstrong. They
want you to stay farm strong and add some mental
skills to your toolkit. Last year, fifteen thousand farmers boosted

(00:27):
their ability to cope with the ups and downs of
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head to the farm strong the website this weekend for
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best out of yourself and the best out of your team.
That's farmstrong dot co dot nz to live well and
to farm well. Chris Brandolino, it's raining men. I don't

(00:48):
know about men, but people could do with raining some
water in parts of the North Island. She's getting a
bit dry.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Holy smokes, a bit dry. Yeah. Look, there's meteorological drought
that has evolved in the fine. Farmers of eastern Tetanaki,
northern and central Manawatu and even southwest Wakoto are all
too well aware of this. So there is drought there
and even surrounding that, there's an extensive area of extremely
dry to very dry conditions. All of this by way

(01:15):
of niewa's New Zealand Drought Index Map, which you can
check it out yourself. But yeah, drawnness is problematic, unfortunately.
Well a bit of good news and bad news and
probably more bad news. But let's start on the bright side,
and that is we're going to get some beneficial rain.
There'll be a little bit of nickel and dime showers
this weekend for the Corimandel, maybe the odd heavy shower

(01:37):
in Tetanaki, but I think we're going to have to
wait until early next week Monday, in particular Tuesday and Wednesday,
when a much better chance for widespread rain forms. Some
of that rain will be heavy. We don't want heavy
rain or too intense rain, as you know, falling on
very dry or drought soils, because that tends to run

(01:57):
off more not get absorbed. Crazy potentially it's own problems.
But once that look, the bad news is once that
rain moves by, and there could be you know, some
widespread fifteen thirty milimeters rainfall mounts, maybe fifty millimeters mounths
in some areas, which is good, but once that moves by,
Jamie we're looking at a return to dryness for the

(02:18):
rest of the month and unfortunately probably nothing in terms
of a surplus for rainfall for a couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
There are we talking about the whole country here, Chris,
or just.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
North Islands in terms of in terms of sorry dryness
or rainfall?

Speaker 1 (02:33):
No, no, I'm just talking about the extended dry Is
it for the entire country or just the dry parts
of the North Island? Sorry?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Oh, look at the worst of the dryness is certainly
over the western and upper North Island full stop. There
are some pockets of dryness that are growing. For example,
over interior Otago Queenstown Lakes District is for one, the
Lower Westland region that's another area around Westport it's becoming dry,
though not prolifically dry, but dry. And over toward Western

(03:01):
Southland that's another area where we have dried to very
dry condition. So the lower part of the South Island
is dry. But really it's the North Island, particularly western
Central that is in dire straits in terms of lack
of rain.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Okay, Chris Brandelina, thank you for your time. Enjoy Valentine's
Day to day and National Lamb Day tomorrow.